


until you remember

by bluemoone



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angry Catgirl is Back, Cheerleader Catra, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Gaslighting, Jock Adora (She-Ra), Memory Loss, Mind Manipulation, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24995455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoone/pseuds/bluemoone
Summary: The trio turns in unison and waves back with bright smiles. It catches Catra off guard when her eyes meet Adora’s, and she flinches. Catra watches her freeze in shock as well, eyes wide and zeroed in on her. But then a couple seconds pass and she turns back to her friends, resuming her conversation as if nothing even happened. The nerve...“I’ll give you a proper introduction later, but first…” Scorpia side-glances when she realizes she hasn’t moved a muscle. “Catra? You ok? Hey, you look like you saw a ghost.”Catra narrows her eyes. “I did.”-or: a college au where settling the score isn't as simple as it sounds.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra), Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra)
Comments: 92
Kudos: 508





	1. the recruit.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was born from seeing a bunch of adorable jock/cheerleader catradora art on twitter, and i, who hates football and watched netflix's cheer once, thought it'd be a great idea to build a story around it. so i went off the rails.
> 
> overall, i think this piece will be a good time, but some parts will hurt, and i want them to hurt in a good way, so please heed the tags and let me know if you believe there's anything i overlooked. :)

“How much longer do you think this is gonna take?” Catra absently taps the bottle of beer she purchased a while ago. It’s gone stale, and she doesn’t want to spend all night in a (admittedly) cozy lounge by the woods. The crowd here is at least twice Catra’s age, all dressed in their work clothes, structured blazers and power suits abound. She scrapes her thumbnail against the thigh of her jeans, fraying into the black denim a fresh rip.

“What’s wrong, kitten?” Double Trouble bumps their shoulder against Catra’s provocatively. “Past your bedtime?” 

Catra snarls. “We’ve been here for forever. I don’t know much longer I can suffer through watching the world’s most boring couple.” Her eyes graze over the older married couple on the other side of the horseshoe-shaped bar. They regard each other with soft eyes as they talk. The woman delicately leans her cheek in the palm of her white-gloved hand. The man gently pinches her nose, and she scrunches her face in response, the graceful regality she normally carries being replaced by the air of a young girl freshly in love. They look so at peace with each other.

“Playing the long game, sweet cheeks.” They take a sip of their gin and tonic.

“Don’t ever call me that.” Catra still hasn’t torn her eyes away from the couple.

“It looks like you’re trying to get in on the action with all that staring.” Double Trouble’s slender fingers cup Catra’s chin to tear her gaze away. “Are you trying to blow our cover?”

Catra grunts and smacks their hand away with the amount of fierceness that she would stamp out her own fascination. “Of course not!” She fights the urge to glance back over by picking off the label on her bottle. “Just...what do you think they’re talking about anyway?” She’s usually pretty adept at picking up distant conversations, but with so much noise in the room, the two are hard to make out. 

“Oh, I don’t know...” Double Trouble copies the woman’s posh accent to perfection. “Darling, I had the most dreadful day at the office today. Revenue is down, and my assistant laced my morning latte with _almond milk_ instead of oat.” They theatrically lift the back of their hand to their forehead and sigh dramatically. “It’s so hard to find good help these days. I need a hair appointment.” 

Catra chuckles despite herself. They’ve been observing this particular couple for the past few weeks. They grab a dim-lit corner table every Wednesday after nightfall. She drinks white wine. He sips whiskey. They’re a damn cliche. But the good part is he always pays in cash and likes to bring his wallet a little over-prepared. 

They’re perfect targets. 

“She’s about done,” Catra alerts. _About time._ She’s taken note of how the husband routinely downs his glass within fifteen minutes and patiently waits for his wife to savor her wine at a glacial pace. Finally, she’s got just about two more sips before they’ll close their tab. “You sure tonight’s the night?” Catra’s not nervous or anything. There’s something else tugging at her. It’s weirdly nice watching them. Not that she’d ever admit it.

“Oh, come on, don’t _pussy_ out on me now.” They perch their elbow on Catra’s shoulder and wink. “Pun intended.” 

“I will throttle you.” Movement out of the corner of her eye lets Catra know that they’re grabbing their belongings to head out. Like always, the woman kisses the man on the cheek and heads for the restroom while he moves to pay out. “Okay. That’s our cue, DT.” Catra takes a parting swig of her god-awful beer. 

“Oh, I love it when you speak thespian to me.” Double Trouble claps their hands with glee. “Showtime!” And with that, they head in the same direction as the woman, only to duck momentarily into the gender neutral restroom. Within a blink of an eye, they return, only now their serpentine green skin is a soft lavender, with eyes to match. Rose colored hair waterfalls behind their shoulders, and their once black leather suit is now made of pink silk and white fur.

Catra follows to post up as casually as possible against the restroom door to ensure that the real lady doesn’t blow their spot. From her vantage point, she can pick up segments of Double Trouble’s voice - well, of her voice in their body. “Oh, darling, you won’t ... who I just saw...!” They speak and use their hand movements strategically to redirect the man’s attention until they snake their hand into the pocket of his royal purple slacks. “...And I told her, you ... see her now that she’s all grown up.” By now, Double Trouble has his wallet in their grasp.

Catra peers from the door with mild amusement until Double Trouble makes a show of throwing out a few bills on the bar and pageant waves to the bartender. “Keep the change, love!” Catra grits her teeth. That’s _their_ money that they're throwing around for the sake of “creating a moment.” 

It’s then that the husband grabs “her” wrist to force “her” towards him, his face showing hints of irritation, but mostly concern. She can barely make out his commanding voice. “Angie, are you … okay? You’re ... strange.” 

“Come _on_. We don’t have all night,” Catra mutters to herself in hopes that Double Trouble will telepathically receive the message. 

The doorknob rattles. Catra promptly takes hold of it to keep it pulled shut. It’s not enough force to prevent the woman from pulling it from the inside, so Catra hoists her feet up to the wall on either side of the door for added leverage. The woman’s muffled, aristocratic tone calls out indignantly from the other side as she tries to pry the door open. “ _What_ is going on here?” The woman’s voice leaks through the door with authority. Catra tightens her grip on the knob, pushes her feet harder against the wall and prays that no one has to take a leak within the next minute or so. “Who’s out there? Answer me at once!”

Catra spares a withering glance to Double Trouble, who’s now laughing carelessly, and scowls. They had two simple tasks. Get the wallet. Get out the door. So could they hurry it up already? 

She’s ripped out of her building irritation when the doorknob snaps out of its socket and all the stored pressure she’s been sending through her legs sends her flying to the opposite wall. She marks the impact with a yelp and crashes to the floor with a merciless thud. 

_Fuck._

When she recovers, the woman is towering over her, her mouth set in a hard line. Her unnerving gaze could turn anyone to stone. The woman refuses to lower her Amazonian stature to Catra’s level, adding to the intimidation factor. “Who do you think you are, young lady? What are you trying to pull?” Her arms are crossed and she still stands with the composure of a queen. This lady has to be some retired supermodel or something. 

It takes a minute for Catra’s body to catch up to her brain. “Uhh, nice hair,” she chirps lamely from the floor. Okay, maybe it’s the other way around.

The woman’s not flattered. “Answer me.” 

Maybe this wasn’t one of her best ideas. Catra gathers the nerve to stand, brush off the back of her pants and preserve a shred of her dignity. “Um.” If she can keep her distracted for a little longer, this could still be salvaged. She runs a hand through her hair, still thrown off by its shorter length. “See I-”

_“Drinks on us!”_

Her head snaps in the direction of Double Trouble. “What the hell are they-” Catra smacks her forehead and groans with all the exasperation her body can hold. 

The woman turns towards the direction of her _own_ voice in the distance. “Oh, do not tell me…” There’s a collective gasp, and soon Catra sees why: the unmistakable glow of a rune seal.

Perfect... They hadn’t realized he was a sorcerer. 

Catra sees the exact moment that Double Trouble’s disguise disintegrates. They’re busted. So she has a couple options: get the hell out of dodge or take a chance on a tag team. “Well, this has been a blast, but…” She moves to leave, but the woman grabs her arm.

“Oh, no, you don’t-” Catra wrenches away and makes a break for it.

She has to shove a few bodies out of her way to make room for the running start she needs to leap up onto one of the pendant lights hanging from the ceiling, then swing to the next, then the next, until she’s closed enough distance between her and her friend who's now being grabbed by the collar and shoved against the bar. “Think fast, DT!” And they do.

The wallet comes soaring her way as she dangles from the ceiling, and she catches it with ease. The man is momentarily thrown off, but he quickly catches up to speed, and now his attention is focused on the catgirl stuffing his wallet into her jacket pocket. He glowers at her, and soon comes the onslaught of attacks. She tunes out the shrieks and shouts of protest to concentrate on her movements. 

She dodges his first blast by leaping to the next light over, swinging around it to redirect her trajectory towards the door that feels so close, yet miles away. She dismounts with a flip, tucking her body for better rotation, and lands fine, but she’s met with a blast that nearly takes her foot off. She back handsprings away. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._ She’s gotta book it. 

Someone cries, “Stop her!” She ducks another blast. 

“ _HEY!_ ” An inhumanly loud voice booms. The walls vibrate with it, and it stills everyone in the room. The bartender points to a sign that reads, _‘THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS MAGIC-FREE_.’ “Take it outside!”

Catra smirks. _Gladly_. Her eyes scan the room, and Double Trouble is nowhere to be seen.

Why is she surprised? 

She turns just in time to see snakes of black rushing towards her. Heat licks at her as the energy whips snap around her, locking her in place. 

“Gotcha.” The man appears from behind a small crowd and sneers victoriously, like a retired fighter reliving his glory days. “Don’t worry, Grox,” he calls out to the burly woman behind the bar. “We’re taking _it_ outside.” Catra is lifted a few feet off the ground and dragged out of the bar in wizard’s chains. The cool night air is a respite, but the jagged brick that digs into her back when she’s thrust upon it is not. “You should know better than to steal from a sorcerer,” the man says haughtily.

Catra stops thrashing against his restraints to roll her eyes. “Wow, you know, I came for the wallet, but I appreciate the tip.” 

The woman steps forward, her hands clasped in front of her body, clutch in tow. “Ease up, Micah. She’s just a girl.” 

Micah doesn’t. In fact, his grip tightens. “Not yet. She could be a shapeshifter, too.” Catra hisses, the dull ache in her bones sharpening. 

“I don’t think she is. If she was, she would’ve done so by now.” She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Let me talk to her, darling. Set her down.”

This time he listens. Catra welcomes the sensation of asphalt underneath her feet. The forces slithering around her body slacken, but only enough for her to breathe without effort.

She has to crane her neck up when the woman approaches her, staring her down curiously. “What’s your name?” she asks.

“As if I’d tell you,” Catra bites. 

The woman takes a leveling breath. “You have two options here: either cooperate or I call the police.” 

Catra strains to escape, but it’s useless. “Bite me!” 

“Very well, then.” She brandishes a cell phone impassively. 

Catra groans. “ _Fine_ ,” she relents, seething. “...It’s Catra.” She’s gone this long evading a criminal record, and tonight’s not the night to break that streak - not over a failed pilfering attempt. 

The phone disappears. “Hm.” The woman studies her closely. Catra feels stripped bare. “Catra, I have a proposition for you. Join me for tea tomorrow.”

“Uh, ok, I mean, I’m not typically into older women, but-” The whips tighten. “Fine, _okay_. Will you let me go now?” Catra barks at the man.

“I think you have something that belongs to me.” The chains finally loosen for Catra to fish the wallet out. 

“Here.” She drops it in the woman’s hand, but the woman still doesn’t move. The two clear their throat.

“What?”

“And the _watch?_ ” Micah moves towards her, holding out his hand expectantly. 

“ _What_ watch?” 

They look at her suspiciously to which Catra turns her pockets inside out. “I don’t have any watch! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The couple exchanges a look. He rubs his naked wrist mournfully. She looks back to Catra. “I’ll see you at Cafe Andromeda at noon." They look at each other again, but this time they grin like they're sharing an inside joke. The smiles are a memory when they turn back to Catra. Should she be scared? "It’s right around the corner from here. Ask for Angella.”

Angella loops her arm around her husband’s, and two enormous translucent wings sprout from her back. They fly away into the night, leaving Catra alone and empty-handed. 

|-|

The distinction between Bright Moon and the Fright Zone is so sharp that Catra immediately knows when she’s crossed the county line. The iridescent streetlights placed a precise twenty feet apart become farther and fewer in between. The brightly lit path fades to a rustic green cloaked in shadow and smog. What were once manicured buildings were now falling apart with boards over the doors and windows. Displaced residents loiter aimlessly, most in the hopes of scoring something, anything that will help them get through the night. Catra can make out a small family in an alley huddled under a single blanket. They sleep pretty soundly to be homeless, but then again, no one in the Fright Zone has anything worth taking. 

It takes another half hour before Catra makes it back to Double Trouble’s apartment, an old storehouse that they’ve transformed into their own haven. Catra harshly knocks on the garage door rhythmically to announce her presence - two slow knocks, then five fast. 

After a moment a buzzer sounds and the garage doors lift with a croaking whine. Catra trudges in to find her partner-in-crime lounging glamorously on their reupholstered velvet sofa, martini in hand. She sheds her leather jacket and throws it onto the loveseat with abandon. Hands on her hips, she confronts Double Trouble with an accusatory pointed finger and a flaming glower. “What the _hell_ was that?! ‘Drinks on us?’ Have you gone insane?!”

Double Trouble just looks at her with that infuriatingly unbothered grin and pushes their glass towards her. “Would you like a taste? It’s a dirty martini. You look like you could take the edge off.”

Catra considers, then tears the glass from their hands so rashly it’s a miracle that not a drop spills on the concrete floor. She gulps it down and shoves the glass back towards them. “Ugh!” Her face twists into a grimace. “Is this- did you put _olive juice_ in that?” 

“Sweetie, do you not know what a dirty martini is?”

“Ugh, this is poisonous!” She tries to wipe the taste off of her tongue with her hands. “At what age did your taste buds die a slow and painful death?”

Double Trouble clicks their tongue. “Not everyone can have taste, I suppose.” They take a long, indulgent sip and set the glass down on what was once an office desk now sanded into a kidney shaped coffee table. “Well, it was a cute plan, kitten. Too bad it failed.” 

“Well, it would’ve worked if you didn’t go ‘off-script!’” She uses finger quotes, hoping they’ll respond better in a language they can understand. “And thanks a lot for leaving me on my own back there,” Catra mutters. 

Honestly, she shouldn’t have expected any better from them. After all, they’ve been up front about their integrity since the day they met. _Rule #1, doll: You’ve got to put yourself first. Who else is going to do it for you?_

And, well, Catra’s had to learn that the hard way. 

Double Trouble’s hands float to clasp behind their head. “You know I live to improvise, and I knew you could take care of yourself. You’ve been doing it long enough.” They kick their feet up on the back of the couch, ankles crossed, eyes fluttering shut. “Besides…” They fish out the watch and twirl the watch around their finger. “I got what I came for.” 

_Typical_. Catra huffs and shifts her balance from one foot to the other. “Well, I’m crashing here, just so you know.” She plops down unceremoniously on the empty spot on the sofa. “I’m tired.” 

Double Trouble doesn’t move an inch. “You mean like you have been the past five months?” 

Catra glares at them, but only to cover the sting. It gnaws at her, knowing that she doesn’t have a place of her own, that she’s reduced to mooching off of a multi-faced con artist now that the foster system’s chewed her up and spit her out. “No. I’ve been tired way longer.” She slouches down in her seat, her legs drifting further away from each other.

“So what happened back there with them, anyway?”

“She...I think she’s taking me out for...tea?” Catra feels as ridiculous as it sounds.

Silence. Then a thunderous cackle. “Oh, honey, they’re _definitely_ roping you into a threesome.” 

|-|

Chimes jingle when Catra enters the cafe. Angella’s sitting just to her left.

“You’re right on time.” She waves her hand over the dainty tea set laid out on the table. “It’s jasmine. My personal favorite.” 

“How’d you know I’d show?” She plops into the chair across from Angella. 

Angella pours the tea into both of their cups, the smoke billowing about fluidly. “I didn’t.”

“Well? What do you want?” Catra wants to cut to the chase because, well, because maybe Double Trouble’s threesome comment is giving her the heebie jeebies.

“Are you in school currently?” Angella takes a small sip of the herbal tea, her pinky suspended sophisticatedly. 

Catra snorts humorlessly. “You could say I’m taking a gap year. Or two.” She tries taking a sip with her pinky up. Decides she never wants to do it again.

“Well. I’m the head cheerleading coach at Bright Moon University.” This surprises Catra. She'd taken her for some high level businesswoman. “The Rebellion is one of the most elite competition teams in the nation. Each year, we compete in the Senior Level 5 division at Despondos, and while we never leave without a top score, I believe, with the help of your skill, the top spot will be a guarantee.”

Catra wants to laugh. “I’m not a ra-ra girl.” Her? In a short skirt? And pom poms? And ribbons? She’d rather die. She should’ve just gotten the threesome proposition. 

“Neither is my team. They’re athletes.” Angella speaks with that same composed confidence, a kind of pride that doesn’t need to ask to be seen. 

Catra scoffs.

“Should I mention that acceptance onto the team will grant you a full-ride to BMU, including your textbooks and housing?” Her rosy lips pull back into a tiny knowing smile. 

That gets Catra’s attention. Going to college was a goal she’d long since lost hope for since the system didn’t exactly set her up for success. “Do I look like someone looking for a handout?” She crosses her arms over her chest and averts her gaze towards the window.

Angella’s eyes rake over her. Surely the fact she’s wearing the same clothes from last night - save for her jacket - hasn’t gone unnoticed. “You look like someone with incredible flexibility and agility who could possibly tumble across an entire football field and barely break a sweat.” Catra shrugs coolly. Angella continues, two fingers resting on her temple, “I’m simply stating the facts of the matter. I have no reason to extend you an offer otherwise. For all I know, I could grow to regret this conversation.” She almost looks like she’s regretting it already.

Catra chews on her lip, eying the bait being offered to her. “So what would I need to do? Hypothetically.”

“You can apply online,” Angella explains. “The deadline’s passed, but I can pull a couple strings for you. Provided your grades check out, you’ll be enrolled within a month.”

Catra nods pensively. Grades have never been a problem for her, and this...this could actually be a possibility? “So that’s it? I do all that and do some flips and shit and I can just go to school for free?” 

“Oh, who said anything about free?”

A baffled look crosses Catra’s face. “But you just said-”

“I said your tuition, books and housing would be taken care of. But you still have a debt to pay.” Angella writes down a number on her business card and slides it across the table.

Catra’s eyes flitter down and back up again, then she does a double take and her eyes widen completely. “ _That’s_ how much the stupid watch cost?” She snorts. “Yeah, I don’t have that kind of money. Clearly.” It wasn't even her who took that dumb watch. 

“I can arrange a part-time job for you to repay me. Between class, practice and your shifts, your schedule will be nicely booked up.” Her lavender eyes send beams through her. Catra can read between the lines: No room for her to get into trouble. “So...what do you say?”

“Fine,” she grumbles. “I’ll do it.”

At this, Angella smiles. It’s warm. It’s kind. It’s foreign. “I’m pleased to hear it.” She hands Catra a white and gold duffle bag that’s been sitting at her feet. “I sincerely hope you’re a better cheerleader than you are a thief.” 

|-|

Catra doesn’t have much to bring with her to BMU, just the basics - her phone, some clothes, deodorant, and a few trinkets here and there that she’s had no way of getting rid of. They all fit in her duffle bag with room to spare. So it's not exactly comforting to see hoards of families crowding around their beloved children, smothering them with affection, and hauling out luggages big enough to clothe five Horde children for a year. 

An overexcited family of three whips past her, all dressed in lapis and luxury, if the structure of the fabric is anything to go by, and damn, that color is the most expensive dye to purchase in the world.

If Catra’s looking for a sign that she doesn’t belong here, here it is. Could she really stomach spending the next four years with a bunch of spoiled, pampered brats who’ve never had to want for anything? What are they going to say of her when they notice that she basically rotates between the same four outfits? 

She quiets the thoughts and makes finding her dorm her priority. Catra has no idea where this Elberon building is, but she'll be damned if she stops to ask for directions. She hoists her bag further up on her shoulder and plunges her thumbs in the pockets of her cargo pants, forging forward with what she hopes is less ‘hi-I’m-fresh-meat’ and more ‘don’t-bother-me-loser-I-know-exactly-where-I’m-going’.

But the truth is, she feels small. And it's a different kind of small from what she’s used to, like she’s a peasant in a palace. She’s used to having nothing to lose, and now she has something to gain, and somehow, this feels worse. 

Common sense soon tells her to follow in the direction of where people are dragging their whole lives, and she eventually finds herself in front of the dorms. They look homier than she'd expected. Like round cottages. She stops in front of a white building with the words ‘ELBERON’ plated in gold. Bingo.

Catra swipes herself in with the key card she received at check-in and beelines for room 5501. Except - whoa…

She didn’t expect it to look like _this_ on the inside. She stops to stare at the surrounding marble, so blue and brilliant it was almost like looking at the sky. The walls have a gradient effect that make her feel like she’s floating in space. And the golden paneling— it’s all overwhelming and her muscles constrict as if in fight-or-flight, telling her to get the hell out of there before she makes a fool of herself, before everyone notices that she’s a fraud.

_Okay, Catra… Get it together._

She forces herself to _fucking relax_ and pushes forward until she reaches an elevator that looks like it might be made of glass. Soon enough, she’s staring up at a door.

_5501._

_5502._

Yeah, figures she’d have a roommate. 

Another swipe and she’s looking at her new home.

Home. _What_ a joke. 

But the place is swank. Catra’s boots echo against the stone flooring as she walks about the common area. The circular windows overlook a pond out back. There’s even a small fountain in the corner, but the sound of constant water gets irritating, so she shuts it off. 

The door to her room is on the far wall, and Catra’s surprised to find it open with the light on. She cautiously pokes in. It’s a fair sized place, but everything is a little shiny for Catra’s taste. She can even see her reflection in the walls, and no one should have to look at themselves that much. But what really gets her attention is the young woman there, sitting on _her_ bed.

“Um, what are you doin-” 

The woman jumps up before Catra can complete her sentence. “Hi! Do you need help with any of your things? I can carry five suitcases in each arm.” She lifts her arms and flexes her muscles with pride. “They call me One-Trip Scorpia! I’m Scorpia, by the way. Your roomie!” She thrusts out a giant pincer which Catra shakes warily. 

“Catra. And no, thanks. I’ve got all my stuff.” She gestures vaguely to her bag. 

“Huh. Guess you packed light! Good on you. Gosh, I wish I could do that, but then I just get worried, like, what if there’s a sudden global pandemic and I need my UV light disinfectant, you know?”

“No. I don’t, actually.” 

Scorpia scratches the back of her neck. “Yeah, it- it’s silly, I know...” An awkward silence falls between them. Whistling, Scorpia nervously looks around the barren room and lands on Catra’s duffle bag as if it hasn’t been there the entire time. “Oh, hey! You have a BMU duffle bag! So do I! It’s in my room. Hang on.” Scorpia runs past Catra, scurries to her room and is back within five seconds. And sure enough, she has a bag just like hers and is holding it up like it’s a trophy. “Do you play a sport?” 

“Yeah, I’m, uh, kind of on the cheer team.” She says the words ‘cheer team’ under her breath, hoping to breeze past it and salvage any hope of having a decent reputation, but then Scorpia gasps and squeals.

Her eyes are glittering. “No! Way! So am I!” 

Catra looks her up and down slowly. _There’s no way…_ She almost groans but bites it back. No need to make enemies on her first day.

If Scorpia’s smile gets any wider, her face is sure to break. “What a small world! We’ll be living together. Cheering together. We are gonna be the best of friends! Can I hug you?” Scorpia holds out her arms.

Catra takes a step back on instinct. “No?”

Scorpia just shrugs. “Hey, that’s fine! There'll be plenty of time for hugs later.” Catra wants to die. “Just so you know, you lucked out by getting placed in Elberon. Not to brag, but we throw the best parties.” She taps the side of her nose with a mischievous look on her face, but it kind of looks like she’s tenderly punching herself.

“Cool... “ Catra shifts from foot to foot. “Hey, uh, not to be rude, but could you, like, leave? I’m tired.”

If Scorpia’s offended, she doesn’t show it. “Oh, yeah, of course! Get some rest, and later I’ll give you my famous campus tour!” She goes to leave, but pokes her head back in to add, “I mean, it’s not famous _yet_ , but it’ll rock your socks, I swear. Ok, bye!” And she’s out of sight.

Catra pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s going to be a long year. 

|-|

To her credit, Scorpia knows an eerie amount about Bright Moon. 

“And this building here is Plumeria, where you’ll find your ecology, anthropology, horticulture classes, et cetera, et cetera. It’s real earthy in there, but if you want to light up a joint in the bathroom, hey, no one will even blink an eye.” The corner of Catra’s mouth lifts. So college could be fun. They keep walking. “This is Dryl, home of the maths, and all science and tech majors. It’s pretty much nerd heaven, and I mean that in the best way possible. I gotta tell ya, though, the building is a bitch to get around, so text me if you get lost, okay?” Scorpia nudges her, and Catra tries not to retaliate. She’s not keen on being touched, especially by giant scorpion ladies she just met. “This is Alwyn, where your history and diplomacy classes will be. I hope you didn’t sign up for any night classes ‘cause this place is mega-haunted…”

Catra has to admit that, while she had been dreading this little tour, it’s turning out to be kind of fun. Scorpia gives her all the ins and outs of each building with tips on how to make life as easy as possible. It’s clear she really cares about her school. 

“And that’s Krytis. No one really goes in there. Not sure why they haven’t torn it down yet, gotta be honest.” Catra stares up at the dilapidated building, and she can’t explain why, but she thinks it sees her, too. It looks like it could have been lifted straight out of the Fright Zone, and for some reason, that comforts her. She’s not the only ruined thing on this campus. Scorpia steals her from her thoughts to ask, “Any questions so far?” 

“Actually, yeah.” She strokes her chin and points to Scorpia’s face, moving her finger in tiny circles. “Are those glasses real?”

Scorpia pushes her bifocals higher up her face and laughs. She’s been wearing them since she pulled Catra out of her room this morning, but she wasn’t wearing them the day before. “Oh, no. I just wear them to look official.”

Catra snorts. “You’re a dork.” Her own words stop her in her tracks. She hasn’t called anyone a _dork_ in years. Not since-

“Oh, how could I forget to ask! What’s your major?” Scorpia’s eyes are wide and her pincers clasp in anticipation. 

“Um, econ.” Catra can't justify why she's embarrassed to answer. Probably from having enough people mock her life choices. “I like numbers and stuff,” is her only explanation. 

“And money, apparently! Man, with an economics degree, you’re gonna be loaded!” Scorpia grabs Catra by the shoulders and shakes her. “Get ready to have so many sleepovers in your fancy shmancy mansion.” 

Catra smiles to herself. Every once in a while, she lets herself indulge in such a fantasy - nothing crazy, but a place to call her own. Maybe it has high ceilings. Maybe the light reflecting off the moons tints her bedroom in golden light just before nightfall. Maybe she sits on her kitchen counter in her underwear, eating dinner with her hands just for the hell of it. Maybe she has someone-

Hold on a second.

Someone catches Catra’s attention from across the quad. 

Oh, no. 

_Hell_ no.

Her blood goes cold. Her chest burns like it’s bleeding acid. She must be hallucinating. 

Catra tightly shuts her eyes in the hopes that when they open again, she’ll see a blonde with a different face. But no. Catra’s eyes aren’t playing any tricks on her. _She’s_ really right over there merrily chatting and laughing away with some square-looking boy and a sparkly girl. 

She looks almost exactly the same, down to the signature hair poof, but she’s gotten beefier over the past few years. Catra can’t help but notice with dismay the cut of her calves, the curve of her delts, the twitch of her biceps as she animatedly moves her arms. 

She looks happy.

She looks happy _without her_. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, she shut Catra out of her life. She threw Catra to the wolves without a second thought. But seeing her in the flesh with the knowledge that while Catra’s been drowning, she’s been _here_ \- living a shiny life with her shiny new friends - it’s something else entirely. Something she didn’t prepare for. 

In the corner of Catra’s eye, Scorpia points in their direction. “Oh, hey, look, there’s Glimmer! And Bow! And Adora!” Scorpia waves her hands over her head and cries out for their attention. “Hey guys!”

The trio turns in unison and waves back with bright smiles. It catches Catra off guard when her eyes meet Adora’s, and she flinches. Catra watches her freeze in shock as well, eyes wide and zeroed in on her. But then a couple seconds pass and she turns back to her friends, resuming her conversation as if nothing even happened.

The _nerve_...

“I’ll give you a proper introduction later, but first…” Scorpia side-glances when she realizes she hasn’t moved a muscle. “Catra? You ok? Hey, you look a little pale, like you saw a ghost.”

Catra narrows her eyes. “I did.” 

So much for no enemies. 

|-|

She manages to steal away from Scorpia to find her drying her hands off in the restroom.

It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in three years, and Catra’s going to milk this moment for all it’s worth. She’s going to have the upper hand. So she leans against the pristinely tiled wall, catching her own reflection in the mirror. Her words drip with sweet menace. “Hey, Adora.” 

The blonde looks up in surprise and then quickly recovers. “Oh, um, hey!” A lopsided smile colors her face. She hastily tosses her paper towel in the bin and turns to face Catra. “How’s it going?” 

Okay. It’s not quite the reaction Catra was expecting, but she refuses to let it throw her off. She pushes herself off the wall with her foot and slinks towards her former friend - her hips swaying with every step - forcing the taller girl back against the bathroom counter. “Bet you’re surprised to see me here, huh?” She jabs a claw into her chest.

Adora looks mortified. _Good._

“Kind of, um…” Adora ducks her head slightly, her hand moving to rub the spot that Catra poked. Her other hand retreats to the back of her neck, but the ghost of her sheepish grin still remains. “I’m so sorry...”

A sardonic grin crosses Catra’s face. Does she really think she can simply dole out some charming, fake little apology, and she’ll just forget what she did? Everything that happened? Oh, Adora’s in for a rude awakening. Catra’s just about to laugh in Adora’s face - or spit, she’s not sure yet - when she finishes her thought. 

“...but do I know you from somewhere?”

...Catra could have just been set on fire. It would have burned less.


	2. burning van.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~8k words fresh out the oven and my brain is baked.

**_Nine Years Ago_ **

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Catra counts the number of steps on the porch of her newest home - Horde Home, as the sign says. She rings the doorbell, and her ears twitch at the sound of the car speeding down the road behind her, leaving her without a second thought. She knows that Octavia is supposed to walk her in - at least wait for her to make it inside safely - but she’s not surprised that she doesn’t. There’s the sound of screeching metal as the rusty deadbolt unlatches, and then she’s met with a tall woman with a lit cigarette hanging lazily from her teeth. The woman gives Catra, now hyper-aware of her tousled hair and disheveled clothes, a once-over. “Um...hi, Ms. Weaver? I’m Ca-”

“No shoes in the house.” Her eyes narrow with scorn. She steps back to let Catra in once she removes her dirty sneakers. The woman walks about the foyer so gracefully, it’s as if she’s floating underneath her robe. She outlines the rules of the house without sparing Catra another glance. “Lights go off at 10. Breakfast is at 7:30am. Be on time, or you don’t eat.” Her stony tone softens when she beckons the blonde girl sitting on the stairs with her chin on her fists. “Adora, dear - show her around, will you?” 

“Yes, ma’am! Hi! I’m Adora.” She pops up and waves.

“Catra.”

Adora beams at her. “I like your freckles. They’re cool.” 

“Um, thanks.” Catra shifts her weight between each foot, a nervous habit. She’s not used to getting compliments. Not used to giving them either. “I like your, um, hair poof thing. It looks...funny.” 

“Oh!” Adora titters and runs a hand over it once, twice. Catra spots a bandage wrapped around her thumb. “Haha, thanks! Come on. Let me show you our room.” Adora grabs her hand and pulls. It’s a little sweaty, but Catra doesn’t mind. She finds herself mesmerized by Adora’s ponytail swinging excitedly from side to side as they bound down the hall, the floorboards creaking under the force of their feet. “That’s Lonnie’s...Rogelio’s...Kyle’s...and here’s ours!" She opens the door. “Ta-da!” 

The room is nothing special. It’s four walls and a roof with the paint chipping in some spots. A few cracks splatter along the tile. Catra’s stayed in worse places. Adora points to everything in the room as she describes them. “There’s your bed,” she explains, gesturing to the small mattress closest to the window. The bed is made, but it looks like a child did it. “And there’s mine!” It looks the same as Catra's aside from the top blanket. It’s red with little sword patterns on it. “There’s a fan in the corner here. Nights are chilly, but it can get kinda hot during the day. Just make sure to turn everything off when you’re not in the room, or Ms. Weaver will get real mad.” She shudders, then brightens up in an instant. “And look! We even have a TV!” Adora runs over to the dresser and hugs the tiny, old television sitting on top of it with pride. 

Catra’s impressed, but she doesn’t want to say anything - not anything that would be used against her - so she lingers in the doorway with her arms wrapped around her torso.

Adora notices, and a flush of pink tints her cheeks. “Is everything okay?” With her jaw hung and eyebrows raised like that, it almost looks like she cares.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Catra mumbles.

Adora tilts her head naively, like she doesn’t understand. “Because we’re going to be best friends.” She says it like it’s obvious. There’s no flattery there; she states it like a fact.

Catra can only blink. “How do you know?”

Adora chews on her lip thoughtfully and shrugs. “I just know.” She proceeds to fuss with the antenna on the television, trying to get a good signal. “Do you like wrestling?” 

A smile rips Catra’s face. Her first in years, if ever. She’s never seen wrestling before, but she decides then that she likes it. “Sure.” 

So they spend the rest of the afternoon on the edge of Adora’s worn futon, cheering on a pair of Silaxian fighters Catra’s never heard of.

It feels like the first day of her life. 

|-|

It’s Adora's first day back at Bright Moon, and she can breathe a little easier knowing that she can start abiding by a routine again.

Her alarm beeps at 5:30am, per usual, for her morning jog. When her eyes float open, she’s startled by the sight of a white coffered ceiling in place of the soft marble she’s gotten used to because - oh, right - she’s moved away from her dorm suite with Glimmer to _this_. She had tried to refuse when Coach Huntara told her she’d be moved into Mara Grayskull’s old cottage, but Huntara insisted that it was due to campus overcrowding. They both knew that was a lie, but Adora also knew that she was in no position to argue that fact. 

Here’s the thing: it’s supposed to be an honor. And it is - to live in the home that Bright Moon’s most renowned athlete once lived, to sleep in the same room she slept in, to follow in her footsteps. But the pressure weighs on Adora. Not only considering the legacy she has to live up to, but also the fact that Mara’s cottage is the social epicenter of BMU. Every post-tournament party, every milestone kickback, every Rebellion game night - Adora will be expected to host, if for no other reason besides the fact that no one can file a noise complaint on them from out here. 

But that’s not her style. None of this - the pastel pink walls, the sheer white drapes, this super plush memory foam mattress - is her style. 

Without turning on the light, Adora does some stretches and changes into a sports bra and shorts before biking to the deserted track field for her early morning cardio - just a few miles to get her blood pumping. The first moon peeks over the horizon just as she finishes her eighth lap, and it feels like her own personal reward. After that she heads back for a quick shower and changes into a different sports bra and track pants. With her mind still soothed by the endorphin release, she pulls out her yoga mat, sits cross-legged on it, and attempts to meditate, hoping this time it’ll make sense. 

It doesn’t.

After losing another battle with her intrusive thoughts, she moves to the kitchenette to make breakfast. Adora preps her meals by the week, and it’s Saturday, so it’s smoothie day. She dumps the already portioned ingredients into her blender (a gift from Glimmer) and blends. For the first time, she’s grateful not to live with her best friend anymore because now she can’t complain about how she regrets giving Adora the blender. 

Smoothie in hand, Adora goes back into the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet and pulls out a clear jar that contains capsules filled with fine green powder. She pops two in her mouth and washes them down with the beverage. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. Just when she’s about to cozy up with a good book (currently reading: _Own the Day, Own Your Life_ ), her phone vibrates, the text tone. She blanches at the message: 

_Ms. Weaver (6:43am): Hi, Adora. I’m sure you’re up by now. Just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. I haven’t heard from you in a while. Hope you haven’t forgotten about me already._

Her thumb hovers the phone, unsure of where to land before deleting the message altogether. Suddenly, she needs to move again, so she throws on her well-loved jacket and heads back out again. “Let’s go for a ride, Swifty…” She hops on her bike to ride aimlessly around campus. 

It’s still quiet and empty especially since classes haven’t started yet. Adora finds it comforting. She’s used to being alone, having never had any real friends before Bow and Glimmer. Sure, she was civil with Lonnie, Rogelio and Kyle back at the Horde, but those three were pretty tight knit, so Adora kept mainly to herself. Sometimes, she’d imagine she had someone with her just to cope with the loneliness. 

Even when Adora joined the skulltag* team in high school, there was a disconnect. She was expected to be a leader, not to foster friendships, and she was better at the former. That’s what got her the opportunity to study at BMU in the first place. She never would’ve been able to afford such an expensive college - any college, really - without the full-ride. 

Adora thinks back on her first day at Bright Moon. She was wonderstruck at how grand it all was. How the campus buildings seemed to kiss the stratosphere. How shiny everything was. How light. How dull and heavy she felt in comparison. She wishes she could say the feeling’s subsided, but it hasn’t. 

Why not, though? She has people that love her, people that root for her and look up to her (maybe too much). She’s on the path towards her dream career. This should all be enough. She should be better by now, but there’s some black hole inside of her that can’t be filled. Maybe it won't ever be.

She rides until the rest of the world wakes up.

|-|

As usual, Adora meets Bow and Glimmer for lunch under their favorite tree. 

“Hey, hey!” Glimmer pipes from her cross-legged position in the grass. Strands of her hair twinkle in the sunlight that filters in from underneath the leaves. “How was your first night in your new home?” She wiggles her eyebrows and pulls out a plastic container from her holographic shoulder bag.

Adora dons a smug expression as she plops down. “Why? You miss me already?” She sees the contents of Glimmer’s container. “Are you having cake for lunch?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” She removes the lid with gusto. “Because I'm an adult, and I can do what I want.” 

“Sure, until Angella comes around and- Hey! Is that lemon poppyseed?” Bow damn near sticks his nose in it. 

“It is.” Glimmer pulls the container away from him. “And it’s all mine!” 

“Is that really how you’re going to treat your _boyfriend_?” He enunciates ‘boyfriend’ like he’s both savoring the word and trying it out for the first time.

Glimmer teases Bow with the loaded fork before popping it into her own mouth. “Yep. Have fun with your bourguignon.” Bow frowns, and that alone is enough for Glimmer to relent and offer him a piece, which he takes off the fork contentedly. 

“Something tells me you didn’t miss me last night,” Adora smirks and looks between them. 

“Of course I did!” Glimmer objects. 

“Oh, sure.”

“Well, what about you? Did you miss me?” Glimmer practically buries her face in Adora’s cheek. “Or were you too busy with your fangirls?”

Adora snorts. “Haha, very funny.”

“Honestly though, Adora, when are you gonna start dating? It’s not like you don’t have prospects...” He side-eyes a trio of freshman sneaking glances at her barely fifteen feet away from them.

Adora’s face burns, and she wraps her arms around her knees. Before she can muster an answer, Bows phone rings. He picks it up, tenses, and then turns it back face down in the grass. “Who is it?” she asks.

“It’s George…” 

Adora and Glimmer stare wearily at Bow. “When are _you_ going to tell your dads that you changed your major? Because I can’t keep lying to them.” Adora means it. She physically can’t keep lying to them. Last time they went to visit, she broke out in hives trying to cover for him, and they ended up having to take her to urgent care. The beauty of it was that her discomfort was enough to draw the conversation away from Bow’s studies and onto preventing Adora from going into anaphylactic shock - so it worked out fine.

“Soon! So soon, I swear. I just can’t bear the thought of breaking their hearts. I mean,” Bow holds up his phone. On the lockscreen is a photo of him smiling from ear to ear with his fathers’ arms wrapped around him, all of them sporting BMU pullovers. “Just look at their sweet faces!” His bottom lip pokes out.

“Bow, I don’t think civil engineering is a career path that’ll bring shame upon the family. Plus, they have twelve whole historians already!” Glimmer points out.

“Oh, yeah! And I can only imagine what Tow, ‘Low, Row, Sow, Beau, _ugh, Snow_ , Theo, Flow, Mo, _god_ , _Woodrow_ , Banjo, and No-Show are gonna say about it,” Bow groans. “Oh my god, they’ll never let me live it down.” 

“How can you say all that in one breath…?” asks Adora, amazed. 

“Lots of practice.” Bow takes a bite of his food, speaking and chewing at the same time. “Look, it’s family tradition, and I know it’s not like that for you guys, but tradition means a lot to us.” He glances at Adora, then quickly away, remorse knitting his eyebrows together.

She really wishes he wouldn’t do that. When Adora first got to campus, her orphan status had preceded her. She gets it: people love a sob story, but she’s never sat well with pity. After all, it’s not like she can miss something she’s never really had. 

“I hear you, Bow, but George and Lance are actually the kindest human beings on the planet.” Glimmer links her arm around his, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. “I bet you a whole lemon poppyseed cake that they’d understand.” 

A sweet smile grows on Bow’s face at the promise-slash-challenge. “You’re on.” They stare at each other a little too long, and Adora playfully rolls her eyes. 

Ever since Glimmer and Bow finally admitted their feelings to each other a month ago, they’ve been pretty gross, but in the most endearing way. They do a great job of not making her feel like a third wheel, but there’s only so much they can hold back. “C’mon, you guys might as well start licking each others’ faces off-”

“Hey, guys!” A robust and cheerful voice catches their attention from across the yard. Their faces light up as Scorpia enthusiastically waves her arms.

They wave back, but Adora’s taken aback by a pair of magnetic blue and gold eyes, brilliant and crystalline against sienna skin. Her dark, cropped hair highlights the contours of her striking features. Adora scans over her lithe body, and no one in Etheria has ever made a simple bodysuit and cargo pants look that good. She’s... _wow._

And oh, shit. Adora’s staring. 

She turns back to her friends to find Glimmer smirking at her. “What were you saying about licking faces?” 

“Stop it!” She frantically waves her hand over Glimmer’s face. “Wipe that look off your face. I wasn’t staring.”

“No one said you were,” replies Glimmer in that faux innocent tone she’s perfected to the detail. Adora relaxes until she hears her friend start to clap and sing under her breath. “Adora’s getting laid this year…”

“Hey!” Adora tackles her. “You know what? I’m glad I moved out!” They roll around in the grass, laughing, while Bow sneaks another bite of Glimmer’s cake.

“Bow! I see you!” 

“Sorry! No dessert left behind!”

Adora releases her hold on her friend, and they both lay on the ground with fading giggles and pants. “Okay...I gotta pee,” Adora declares. “Be right back.” 

She leaves the two to themselves just as Bow wipes a bit of icing onto Glimmer’s nose, Glimmer scrunching her face in response. 

|-|

“Hey, Adora.”

It’s the girl from before. 

_Wow. She knows my name._ Adora blushes from her place at the sink. _Guess she’s a fan of the team._ “Oh, um, hey!” _Be cool. Just be cool._ “How’s it going?” Adora directs her energy into wiping her hands on the backs of her thighs when the girl gets closer. She’s even prettier up close.

“Bet you’re surprised to see me here, huh?” She pokes her in the chest, and Adora’s not sure if she’s mad or hitting on her. If she’s hitting on her, it’s a little aggressive. 

But at this distance, Adora can make out the freckles dotting her cheeks, and...of course she has freckles. She’s always had freckles, she’s… sh- “Kind of, um…” She’s seen them before. She’s seen these eyes before. They’re not the kind of eyes that someone could just _forget_ , but when Adora tries to place them in her mind’s eye, she hits a blind spot. “I’m so sorry, but do I know you from somewhere?” 

Shock crosses the girl’s face, then a scorching glare takes its place. “Are you...joking?” Adora can feel her smolder, and she’s frozen in her spot. If Medusa’s real, Adora’s found her. 

Her blush intensifies, and she fumbles over her words. “I’m sorry- I can be a little bit of a... My memory can be awful. Just, um, remind me of your name again? Oh, I know! Were you maybe in my First Ones history cla-” 

A strong hand shoves Adora in the chest and sends her reeling back into the counter. The girl smacks her hands down on the surface, trapping Adora in and bringing their faces so close that Adora can feel her breath. “Okay, _princess_. Drop the charade.” Her lip curls, and Adora’s honestly not sure if she’s going to make it out of the bathroom alive. 

She holds up her hands in surrender, cracking an anxious smile. “I-I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. I swear, I- I feel like I know you. It’s almost like I’ve seen you in my dreams or something…” She gasps at her own lack of filter and slumps in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. That was creepy.” Adora releases a breath she didn’t realize she was holding when the girl takes a step back. 

Some of the hardness slips from her glare, but it’s replaced by a new kind of anger that Adora can’t pinpoint. Her volume drops to a near whisper. “What kind of fucked up game are you playing...?” 

“I’m not-” Adora tries to find the right thing to say, but every scenario she comes up with ends with her on the floor with a roll of tissue paper stuffed down her esophagus. “I… I have to go!” She ducks and runs out of the bathroom, out of the building, back out into the quad where her friends - who she feels good and safe and sane with - are waiting. 

“Hey! You ok?” Glimmer asks, her round lilac eyes made even rounder with concern.

“Uh, yeah!” Adora brushes off, catching her breath.

“Adora,” Bow starts, the suspicion evident in his voice. “Why were you just sprinting towards us with impeccable form?”

“Oh, you know…” Adora makes a show of stretching her quads, pulling the heel of her foot deep into her glutes. “Never too early to start training right?”

“You’ve been training all summer,” Glimmer replies flatly. It’s true. Glimmer complained about it all summer. 

Bow gets on his feet and places a hand on her shoulder. “Did something happen?” 

“No!” She waves him away. “I’m _fine.”_ She spreads her legs so they’re a little past hip width apart and bends over her left leg to stretch her hamstring. “I’m awesome, just great.” Now, the right. “I definitely did _not_ just make an ass of myself in front of a pretty girl, _nope_!” 

The two share a secret smile. “What girl?” Glimmer smirks.

Adora sighs and straightens, too embarrassed to fight against the inevitable. “Scorpia’s friend. I don’t know. I ran into her in the bathroom, and I think she knew me, but I didn’t know her, and I’m pretty sure I, like, offended her or something.” She drops her head in her hands. 

Glimmer stands as well and gently removes Adora’s hands. “Of course, she knows you. You’re Adora! _The New Mara_!” she sings, making a show of jazz hands. Bursts of glitter emanate from them for effect.

“Ugh,” Adora winces. “You know I hate when people call me that.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. You can’t be expected to know everyone on campus just because they know you.” Bow soothes.

Adora strokes her chin. “Maybe I met her at a party? Or something?”

“That could make sense...considering how you party.” Glimmer elbows Bow and snickers, and he at least has the decency to try to hold back before giving into a chuckle.

“Hey!” Adora pokes both of them in the stomach, causing their laughter to intensify.

“What?” Glimmer asks between giggles. “It’s not our fault you’re a lightweight!” She throws her arm around Adora’s shoulder, who has to bend over to comply, considering their height difference.

Bow does the same and adds in a noogie. “Hey, it’s ok! Accept it. We love you, anyway.” 

Adora feigns a groan and accepts the teasing. “You’re lucky I love you back!” She elbows the both of them.

“Or else what? You’ll challenge our lamp to a sword fight again?” Bow and Glimmer’s laughter reignites.

“That was one time!” Adora cries, her face red.

Bow gives Adora some relief, but doesn’t take his arm away from her shoulder. Instead, he wraps his other arm around Glimmer and pulls her in, so they all form somewhat of a huddle. “Speaking of parties, it’s Sea Hawk’s last Burning Van tonight!” 

“Adora, you ready?” Glimmer raises an eyebrow at her friend, to which Adora gulps.

“They’re throwing it where I now live. It’s not like I have a choice. I just hope no one dies.” 

“Don’t we all...” They take a moment of silence. “Alright, then. Let’s go find some tinder!” Bow pumps his fist when they all break.

Adora casts a lasting glance back to the building she just came out of before following her friends to their residence hall to rummage for anything flammable and disposable. 

|-|

Catra leaves the restroom in a daze, her mind spinning to the point of near combustion.

What the hell was _that_? Adora’s always been kind of dumb, but not that dumb. You don’t just forget someone you lived with for years. Someone you-

“Oh, hey, there you are, wildcat!” Scorpia pops out from around the corner when Catra passes. “Is it okay if I call you wildcat! It’s not offensive, is it?”

“Sure…” Catra mumbles, not really listening.

Someone you shared clothes with, a room with, a bed with-

“Uh...sure, it’s okay, or sure, it’s offensive?” 

Someone you spent almost every waking moment with-

“It’s...okay…” 

Someone you know everything about-

“Oh, good! Hey, you down to go to Mara’s cottage tonight? It’s our last hurrah before classes start, it’s tradition. So you have to go.”

Someone you-

“Down, yeah…”

But then again. This wouldn’t be the first time Adora surprised her. 

_...Adora will forget all about you. I’ll make sure of it..._

“That bitch...” Catra whispers. 

Scorpia gasps in indignance. “Woah, woah, woah! I’m sorry, but you can _not_ talk about Mara like that!”

“What?” Catra shakes her head. “Yeah, I wasn’t listening. Hey, I’m gonna head back to my room. I need to lay down.”

“Okay!” Scorpia calls after her. “Be ready by 8!” 

|-|

“So where’s this Mara person?” Catra asks Scorpia as they reach the top of a hill that leads to a two-story cottage just off campus. Groups of students litter the front yard with drinks in their hands. Truth be told, Catra was prepared to blow off this dumb party, but Scorpia insisted, saying that _everyone_ would be here, and if _everyone’s_ going to be here, then Catra supposes she should make an appearance. 

“Huh? Oh, ha!” Scorpia flicks her wrist. “She doesn’t live here anymore. She graduated five years ago.”

“Are you talking about Mara Grayskull?” Catra wasn’t ever that into sports, but a certain someone was, and she’d idolized Mara to the point where Catra was sure she was going to build a statue for her at some point.

“Who else would I be talking about? This cottage is named after her. Ah, she’s a legend.”

“So if she doesn’t live here, who does?”

“Well, in her honor, it’s tradition for the skulltag team’s paragon to move in in her place, so I’m sure Adora’s moved in by now.”

Catra halts in her tracks. “Adora...lives here?” She takes in the cottage. It’s just as big as the home they grew up in, but a lot more pleasant to look at. Greenery snakes around and threatens to swallow the brick and white paneling of the exterior. The stone path leads to a bright coral arched door with a light illuminated over it, and right behind that door...Adora lives there. 

“Oh, I forgot!” Scorpia exclaims. “I haven’t introduced you two yet! You’ll meet her tonight. She’s incredible. Their coach moved her to paragon after just one year on the team. People are calling her the new Mara. If she keeps it up, she’s set to go pro just like her.” Catra can’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from the door. Adora’s here, living out her dream life. Guess she really was holding Adora back - one final distraction to be cut out of her life so that she could build her perfect world. _Well, g_ _ood for fucking her_. 

Her body starts up before her mind does. A painful lump settles in her throat and a weight in her chest shallows her breathing. Her legs unconsciously move into a lunge position, and Catra is ready to bolt, but Scorpia latches on to her arm before she can move. “Come on! Let’s go out back. That’s where the rest of the gang is.” Catra clenches her jaw as she is dragged into the throes of social interaction. 

The firefly-lit backyard is even more crowded than the front despite there being less open space thanks to a battered and rusty turquoise van sitting in the middle of the yard. “Who owns that piece of junk?” 

Scorpia lifts her arms toward the van like a TV show host. “Catra. Welcome to your first - and probably last - Burning Van!” 

If Catra’s meant to be seeing something special, she doesn’t get it. “And that is...?”

“So over there - that’s Sea Hawk - a senior.” She points to a violet-haired guy in a bleached denim jacket and red bandana absolutely fawning over a blue-haired dark-skinned girl who looked like she’d rather be chewing glass. “He’s the coxswain on the rowing team and kind of a pyromaniac - almost got him kicked off the team - so every year to commemorate a new year, we let him channel that impulse into this mega-bonfire. Whoever finds the ugliest van gets first dibs. This year it’s Mermista there. Just like last year. And everyone brings an item to ceremoniously throw in the fire. It’s sort of a tradition. Do you have anything you want to get rid of?” 

“No. It’s not like you told me about this,” Catra answers through grit teeth. 

“Oh... Right. Sorry about that.” Scorpia’s apologetic tone swiftly morphs into an elated one. “Hey, Perfuma!” A tan blonde steps off the veranda in a hot pink maxi dress and light green roses vining the strands of her hair. The fireflies have taken a liking to her foliage, so she shines just a bit brighter than everyone else. Add that to her easy smile, and she’s the embodiment of a ray of sunshine. 

“Scorpia! It’s so wonderful to see you!” She pulls Scorpia in for a hug, which Scorpia easily gives into. 

The hug starts to go on for a little too long before Scorpia pulls away and gathers herself. Thank god, because Catra was two seconds away from puking up dinner. “Oh! This is Catra. She’s new here. Catra, Perfuma.”

“So good to meet you, Catra!” Perfuma throws her arms around her in an equally loving hug. Catra clenches her eyes shut, her arms float awkwardly in the air, and it is taking everything in her not to shove her away. “You’re going to love Burning Van!” Perfuma pulls away, but her hands still rest on Catra’s shoulders, her dark eyes warm and open. “It’s such a powerful cleaning ritual. Once we let go of that which no longer serves us, we can start a new year fresh and free of burdening ties to the past. What are you releasing tonight?”

“Uh, nothing. I wasn’t aware I was supposed to bring something.” She cuts her eyes at her roommate and steps back and away from Perfuma’s grasp.

She only giggles. It has a light little lilt to it. “That’s okay! Last year, I wasn’t ready to make the space I needed to welcome new energy into my life, so instead I whispered my intentions to the burning flames of the van, and it worked just as well! Now...I’m ready to accept new people into my life with an open heart.” By this point, Perfuma’s gaze has drifted away from Catra and into the googly eyes of Scorpia.

Catra looks between them, and now it seems like a fine time to excuse herself. “I’m going to grab a drink or something,” she mutters. The two manage an affirmative, but don’t look away. Catra climbs the steps of the porch and weaves through clumps of unknown faces as she makes her way inside. 

And for a moment she could forget, but now there’s no escaping the reality that everything that meets her eye is _Adora_. This is her world. This is Adora’s dining room with her polished wooden table and chairs and her window seat and her oh-so quaint chandelier. There’s Adora’s living room with her plush couches and her fireplace and, look, there’s even a painting of Mara on the mantle. Catra contemplates what it would take to burn it all down. 

Her wandering eyes catch Adora’s from out the window, and Adora promptly looks away, making Catra’s heart skip a beat.

There’s a sick compulsion to keep looking around, to hunt for any trace of herself left in Adora’s orbit. Because maybe she’s the one who’s losing her mind. 

She goes back out onto the porch instead. 

She’s got a theory that needs testing. 

|-|

There she is. She’s here. 

Adora’s only caught glimpses of her, but there she is across the veranda - leaning against the railing and staring into the distance. 

She should go talk to her. Try to clear things up. 

No, she shouldn’t. She’ll just make things worse... 

_No_ , she has to talk to her. She needs to know her. 

But what if-

“Adora! Just go talk to her,” Bow cuts in on her one-woman argument. The white noise of the party floods back into her awareness.

“Seriously, you’ve been drooling over her since she got here,” Glimmers adds. “Talk to her before she realizes, freaks and files a restraining order on you.” She vanishes into a thin midst of glitter and reappears two seconds later with a bottle of beer. She shoves it in Adora's hand.

Adora blinks. “But I already have a-” She lifts her own half-full bottle, but her lips round in understanding when Bow nods in the girl’s direction. “Okay. Okay. I can do this…” She takes a deep breath, gears herself up, then deflates. “I can’t do it,” she whines. Adora can admit that she’s not much of a charmer and is usually happy to pass off smiling and nodding as flirting. Plus, she’s had enough challenges for the day between helping Sea Hawk and Mermista move a rusty old beat up van into the backyard, deflating all the tires and diligently triple checking the cottage for any unaccounted for fire hazards - all of which under certain circumstances would be a piece of cake, but the easy option isn’t exactly available to her at the moment.

“Adora, if you can take on four skulltag players without batting an eyelash, you can talk to a girl.” Bow walks behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders, giving her only the hint of a push. 

“Fine,” she resigns. “Wait! I don’t even know her name.”

“It’s Catra.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mom told me about her. She’s her newest recruit.”

“She...she’s a cheerleader?” Her doe eyes study Catra clad in the same outfit as before but with a leather jacket effortlessly thrown over her shoulders. Her hands peek out from it, hanging lazily over the railing. Adora tries to picture the white and gold of a cheer uniform over her black and red, but it proves difficult reconciling the two.

“Yes. Now go!” Glimmer urges.

Bow gives her shoulders an encouraging squeeze. “You’ll be fine! You’ll do great.”

“Yeah! She looks…” Glimmer and Bow glance at Catra, frowning and flicking away a piece of lint from her top. “Friendly?” They share a dubious look. Glimmer thinks for a moment, then hits Adora with an unsettling grin. “Either you go talk to her now...or we go tell her what you did at last year’s Speak No More party.” She crosses her arms with righteous finality. 

Adora gasps, and her eyes almost bulge out of their sockets. “You wouldn’t!” 

“Try us,” Bow mirrors Glimmer. 

“You-you can’t!” Adora sputters. “It’s called Speak No More for a reason!”

“You have five seconds.” 

Adora practically sprints to slide up next to her. “Hey! Hi, um, Catra? Catra! What’s up? How are you?”

Catra hardly seems to register the sense of haste and stress. In fact, she doesn’t even move. “Just peachy. How are you, Adora?” 

“I’m good. I’m great. Um, do you like beer?”

“No,” Catra answers, but she plucks the bottle from her hands, pops the cap off with her teeth and takes a swig anyway.

“You don’t have to- it was a twist top…” Adora absently taps the lip of her own bottle with her front teeth. A dimple craters her cheek as an apologetic smile graces her visage. “Hey, I’m sorry for being so weird earlier.”

“It’s ok. Things happen.” She seems calmer than before - an air of nonchalance cooled her previous fire. 

“If we’ve met before, I’m really sorry! I kind of get hit on the head a lot, you know, skulltag and all,” Adora jests, taking Catra’s little snort in response as a small progression. “Um, but if it’s okay, I’d really like to get to know you.” 

Catra takes a long, long sip of her drink before finally locking eyes with her, saying evenly, “Well, then. Get to know me.” 

Adora grins broadly. “Okay! So, uh, is this your first year at BMU?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cool! What’s your major?”

“Economics.”

“Wow! That’s super impressive.”

“And yours is...political science?"

“Political science,” Adora answers in unison. “Woah! How’d you know?!”

Catra kind of shrugs and her eyes lift in a half eyeroll, “Wild guess.”

“Wow, you’re good!” _If I say ‘wow’ one more time, so help me god._ “So where you from?”

“You know, around.”

Adora laughs nervously. “Wow. Never been!” _Oh, god. Just stop talking._

Catra whips around to lean back against the railing on her elbows. She gestures towards the interior of the house with her bottle. “Sweet digs you got here.” 

“Oh. Thanks, it’s...yeah, it’s...new.” Adora turns as well and slumps against the wood. 

“You must be pretty loaded to afford this place all by yourself.” 

And at that Adora has to laugh. It’s full-bodied and genuine, different from her previous anxious titters. “Oh, no. Definitely not. I grew up in an orphanage. I’m surprised you don’t know.”

“...And how would I know that?”

Adora’s head lowers as she drums her fingers on the glass of her bottle. “It just seems like everyone does. Word gets around pretty quickly.” 

“Hey...” Catra begins to fiddle with the cuff of Adora's jacket sleeve. Adora has to fight to keep her hand still, as if movement would scare her touch away. “I really like this jacket. Where’s it from?” 

While she’s relieved to no longer be in the driver’s seat of this conversation, the physical contact further scatters her already frantic brain cells. “Oh, um, hm,” she thinks really, _really_ hard, the difficulty stemming both from locating an old memory and from Catra’s knuckles softly brushing her wrist. “It’s a little fuzzy, but if I remember correctly, my sort-of foster mom gave it to me? I'm pretty sure. I’ve had it for years. It even used to have this neat pin on it, but I lost it, like, a while ago.”

“Sounds like you don’t,” Catra remarks cryptically. 

“Huh? Don’t what?”

“Remember correctly.” 

Adora laughs her dorky little laugh and drawls, “What? Do you know something about me that I don't?” 

“Maybe I do, Adora,” Catra tilts her head in a coyish manner. She’s strange, yet familiar. It sets an unsettling, heady feeling in Adora’s chest, like she’s toying with her mind the same way she’s toying with her sleeve. Maybe it’s just the beer. 

Adora clears her throat to gather herself. “So how’s it been for you here so far? Do you miss home at all?” Catra withdraws her hand, and Adora instantly misses the contact, proper oxygen intake be damned. “I remember how out of place I felt when I first got here.” 

Catra doesn’t answer. She just stares at her until Adora sinks under her gaze. 

The tension’s broken when Sea Hawk hoists himself on top of the van, hands set on hips, his chin lifted towards the gods. “Everyone gather ‘round! Gather ‘round for the commencement of the fourth annual Burning Van ceremony. I present to you The Dragon’s Daughter 4!”

“It’s starting!” Adora grabs Catra’s free hand in a rare moment of liquid courage, or stupidity, or both, and guides her onto the grass to convene with the rest of the party’s population all forming a semi-circle around the vehicle. She pushes them both towards the front of the crowd against no objection. If she’s going to host this thing, she should at least get premium viewing.

“Ahem,” He loosens his bandana from around his neck to use as a handkerchief. “It warms my heart to have my closest and dearest friends in my midst. The past four years have been jam-packed with some of the most daring and harrowing adventures Bright Moon has ever seen! Battling the menacing terror of slumber during midterms! Defeating the most violent of hangovers after canoodling ‘til sunrise in the Whispering Woods! I once went toe-to-toe against ten monsters with nothing but my left boot and a bottle of brandy.” 

“Sea Hawk, monsters went extinct ages ago,” Mermista drones from the ground. “Will you just set the thing on fire already?” 

“As soon as I have a perfect match from my perfect match.” He winks and holds his hand out to Mermista, who groans and hands him a gas container and a pack of matches. 

Sea Hawk hops off the van. “Make space, everyone. Make space.” He douses the vehicle in gas while the crowd retreats to prevent their faces from being burnt off. Once he’s satisfied with his work, Sea Hawk addresses the student body. “My comrades! Some of us go out with a bang. Sea Hawk, however, goes out with a _flame_!” He lights the match and flicks it towards the van, sending it in ravaging flames. The doors of the van blast open from the pressure, and cheers and shrieks erupt as Sea Hawk howls victoriously. “Aha! Adventure!” He then takes Mermista’s hand and kisses the back of it. “Miss Mermista. You have the honors.”

“Ugh, let’s just get this over with...” She holds a book up over her head. “Tonight I’ll be sacrificing the latest and worst installment of the Mer-Mystery series, _Mer-Mystery: The Squid Scandal_.” She turns to the inflamed van and hurls the book through the open door, shouting, “Squidmund deserved a redemption arc!” The crowd cheers wildly. With a self-satisfied smirk, Mermista leaves the circle as swept up in Sea Hawk’s arms. She allows it. 

Perfuma steps up with her nose buried in a scarf, and with a closer look it’s evident that tears are welling in her eyes. “Thank you so much for the joy you’ve brought me, but I recognize that I need to move on in order to grow,” Perfuma tells the scarf earnestly. “I release you now.” She tosses the scarf into the van and watches it burn with a slow, deep breath. The tears begin to stream down her face as she turns back to the circle. Unsurprisingly, Scorpia is there front and center to meet her with open arms. 

Bow steps forward, his voice cracking as he speaks, “Tiny Bow. You’re my day one, buddy. But I’m a man now. And it’s time to let you go, so that I can make space for Big Bow. Thank you for your service, my guy...” 

Adora glances down at Catra watching the spectacle, and all she feels is warmth. Here Catra doesn’t look intimidating or bewitching. She looks… She _feels_ like home, like being curled up in a warm bed, shielded from the chill of night. It’s something Adora’s never felt before. It’s got her disoriented and so certain and so sure that she should be holding her hand. 

Oh. Right.

She’s still holding her hand. 

Adora indulges herself in a soft squeeze and instinctively runs her thumb over Catra’s knuckles to which Catra hisses and snatches her hand away as if Adora were the fire. “Sorry! I… Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” She's never particularly wanted to hurl herself into a van before, but tonight it feels like a possibility. Chewing the inside of her cheek, Adora racks her mind for a way to clear the air. “Did you bring anything?”

“No... But I know a neat trick. Can I borrow your jacket for a second?” 

“Uh, sure.” Adora doesn’t give handing over her jacket too much thought, and the extra breeze is a reprieve from the building heat. “What are you going to do?” Thrill and apprehension entangle her nerves. 

“Trust me. You’ll get a kick out of it.” With the jacket hanging over her shoulder, her finger hooking the collar, Catra steps forward into the open space as Bow exits. “Good evening,” she starts, compelling and commanding attention. Adora looks on, beguiled. “I’m Catra. I’m new here. And I’ve got something I want to get off my chest.” She sighs. “See, this jacket was stolen.” Gasps scatter across the crows. Adora eyebrows furrow, her feet starting to move her forward, but Catra looks her in the eye and stops her with a subtle hand. “I know, I know. Stealing is wrong. You see, I thought I was doing it out of love. I thought I was doing a good thing. But now,” She holds the garment up to inspect it. Her voice oozes with guilt. “I realize the error of my ways, and now I’m ready to release all the guilt and shame it brings me.” With that, Catra tosses Adora’s jacket over her shoulder and into the hungry blaze behind her.

“No!” Adora lurches forward, her arms outstretched in a futile hope to salvage it, but all she can do is helplessly watch a piece of herself slowly curl up and wither into charred black flakes. She whirls on Catra. “Why did you do that?” 

Catra has the gall to smile, and it’s as dazzling as it is terrifying. “Oh, Adora. Just as dumb and naive as ever. You wouldn’t want a stolen jacket, would you?” She casually saunters through the cluster of students, who repel from her as if they were the same sides of a magnet.

Adora follows her, ignoring her classmates' murmurs of astonishment, her fists clenched so tightly her nails could hit bone. Outrage mantles her face and neck, and the warmth she felt before now feels like an inferno. “What are you talking about? My jacket wasn’t stolen! What was that?”

“I believe Perfuma called it ‘letting go of the past.’” 

“What?! What past?” 

Catra pivots to face Adora, her eyes a raging fire that could rival the one behind them. “Like I said, I know something about you that you don’t. And I’m going to ruin you with it.” She leaps to perch on top of the railing of the porch. “Oh, but I can’t forget…” Catra rolls the sleeve of her own jacket up to reveal a golden feather pinned to the inside of it. “Guess you won’t be needing this anymore.” 

Adora’s stunned to see such a specific piece of her childhood staring back at her. She unconsciously reaches for it, but Catra shoves her sleeve back down, and it’s out of sight. “See you around, _She-Ra_ ,” Catra purrs, mocking in her cadence. She launches herself onto the roof, and she’s out of sight, too. 

Adora tries to call after her, but a sharp pang in her chest makes her cry out instead.

|-|

**_Three Years Ago_ **

Catra clasps her satchel and throws it over her shoulder. There’s not much in it. This is the longest she’s ever gone without moving homes, but the reminder of what little she can call her own feels familiar. She leans against the window by the front door, waiting for a grey car, but hoping for a red jacket and a bike. 

“You’re a fool if you think she’s coming. As if she’ll jeopardize her future for you.” Catra doesn’t have to turn around to know who the voice belongs to. Her body recognizes it and goes rigid in response - fight-or-flight gearing up and ready to go. “Once you’re gone, Adora will forget all about you. I’ll make sure of it.”

She’d been making empty threats like that since Catra first got there. She knew to pay them no mind. But now it’s her last day. Catra could once and for all unleash all the wrath, the rage, the revenge - everything this lady’s had coming to her since she stepped foot in this house. She faces the haggard woman posted by the stairs. She’s quit smoking, but the old habit shows in the lines of her skin. 

Catra decides she’s not worth it. “Okay. Good luck with that,” she scoffs with an unbothered mask, though worry seeps into her eyes once they find refuge out the window again. Something gnaws at her. “So what’d you tell them to get me out?” Catra tries to leave every trace of emotion out of the question.

“What are you on about now?”

“You must have said something for them to move me. I’ve been here for long enough. They wouldn’t just do it on a whim. It’s too much work for them.” 

“I said nothing. If it were up to me, you would’ve been out of my hair years ago.” 

Catra jabs her tongue into her cheek. If Shadow Weaver didn’t get her kicked out, then who did? 

It’s 5:03pm. The grey car arrives, both to Catra’s expectation and disappointment. Octavia honks the horn from the driver’s seat, making it clear that she’s not planning on getting out.

“Have a nice life, I suppose.” Shadow Weaver says in her patronizing way. Catra doesn’t respond or spare her another glance, just walks slowly out onto the porch.

She’ll be here by the sixth step, Catra tells herself.

One. 

Two. 

Three. 

Four. 

Five. 

Six.

Adora doesn’t come.

The car drives Catra away to a new life. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *not me making up my own etherian sport so i don't have to learn the rules of real ones. so "skulltag" is inspired by the horde training simulation in promise, as well as seeing adora fighting with a battle staff in s3 and s5. details will be explained more as the story goes on, but adora's position of 'paragon' ofc makes her the most important member of the team.
> 
> and thank you for the kudos + comments! they're always appreciated. <3
> 
> i'm a sucker for a fic-inspired [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/08PzqNxr1vm3kEqUqG9FXI), so here ya go!
> 
> 'til next time.


	3. it was poison.

**_Four Years Ago_ **

Adora barely makes it two steps in her room before she and all her stuff are knocked clean to the cold floor. Her vision clears on a pair of gleaming blue and gold eyes and a field of freckles. 

“Happy birthday, Adora!” Catra squeals, mere centimeters away from her ear. 

“Ah, hey! I’d rather _not_ burst an eardrum on my sixteenth birthday.” Adora covers her ear, playfully shoving her friend in the shoulder.

“You’re so dramatic.” Catra sits back on her haunches, her feet still bracketing Adora’s thighs. The large plain gift bag Adora was holding, now fallen on its side with fabric spilling out of its opening, steals her attention. She pinches it between her fingers before Adora can stop her. “Whatcha got here?” 

Adora doesn’t mean to snatch the bag with as much force as she does, but she'd hoped to tuck it away before Catra noticed she was home from practice. “Nothing! Just, uh, some stuff from Ms. Weaver.” This happens every year. Shadow Weaver catches her at the door, bestows her with some gift for her birthday, and Adora pretends to like it. And that was all fine until she realized that she only ever gave presents to her - no one else. 

She'd never noticed until she thoughtlessly set Catra up with the expectation of a gift some years ago, when she was still new in the home. Catra brushed off the idea even then. ( _“Tch. I don’t need some kind of reward for not dying. I’ve gone this long without any stupid presents, why start now?”_ ) But when the day came around, Adora didn’t miss the hopeful sheen in her eyes, or how she rushed home after school in lieu of their typical exploratory amble. All only to receive a short, sarcastic “Congratulations.” from Shadow Weaver, and that was only after Adora clumsily informed her what day it was. It was like all air left Catra’s body, sucked out of her by a vacuum. 

Neither of them had said a word until they got to their room and Adora sheepishly presented the doodle she’d drawn for her (because two gifts are supposed to be better than one). It wasn’t much. It wasn’t even good. It was just the two of them by the pond. She’d drawn their eyebrows too harshly, so they both looked like little menaces. C + A 4EVER was written across the bottom like a banner in block letters. Adora’s hands were shaking when she offered it, and Catra’s shook taking it. 

She stared at it, stiff, for what felt like an eternity. Adora was ready to take it all back, tell her to throw it in the bin if she didn’t like it, but then Catra wordlessly threw her arms around her neck. It wasn’t exactly a thank you, but it was better. Catra had never let her hug her before.

Now Adora makes sure to get her two presents for her birthday.

Having perfected her mask of apathy over the years, Catra hums noncommittally and relieves Adora of her weight to sit on the floor. “You don’t have to be all weird about it, ya know...” She plucks the bag from Adora’s grip, puncturing the uncoated paper in the process, and unceremoniously dumps its contents on the floor. 

They’re pastel dresses.

A volcanic cackle bubbles out of Catra, and her palm hits her forehead with a smack. “All that time she spends up your ass, you’d think she’d know your style!”

“Yeah…” Adora frowns at the ruffled chiffon. Shadow Weaver’s always had old-fashioned taste. “Do you want any of them?” 

“Ew!” Catra cries, disgust rank on her face. She holds one of the dresses up against her body, and Adora doesn’t bother to clamp down on her amused grin. The garments look especially lurid against Catra’s ripped jeans and band tee, knotted to cinch at the waist and designed with The Crimson Waste’s latest album cover. “As if I’d be caught dead in any of this! And you shouldn’t either. Besides, I got you something way cooler.” She holds out her backpack. 

Adora takes it gingerly. “You got me your bag?” 

“Open it, dumbass.” 

Adora does and pulls out the bomber jacket stuffed inside. It’s a bright and bold red apart from the strip of white on the sleeves. It feels sturdy as hell, but the fabric on the outside is soft and shiny like satin. Her face goes slack while she registers what she’s seeing, what she’s actually holding in her hands. “Is this the jacket from the shop on Forge Street?” It was on display in the window, and Adora had ogled at it for so long, the manager had to come out and tell them to buy something or leave. The real customers were getting weirded out.

Catra nods. “Turn it around.” 

Adora does, and there’s this highly detailed embroidery of a majestic white dragon on the back. At this point, she's sure her soul is about to leave her body, and all that will be left of her is the enraptured “Whoa…” that slips out of her. “How did you get this…?” she asks incredulously to which Catra shrugs in that very specific way that tells Adora she’d rather not know. Realization extinguishes her glee. “Catra! I can’t just traipse around in something that’s been stolen!” she exclaims.

“Will you keep it down?” Catra covers her mouth with her hand. “And, I mean, what? Are you gonna take it back? ‘Cause I’m not.” 

Adora lets out a muffled groan. It’s not that this was the first time Catra’s ever swiped something. Not by a long shot. She’s been practicing the art since they were kids, lest they be resigned to rely on the mercy of Shadow Weaver’s meager and selective generosity. But they were normally small things like snacks that weren’t allowed in the house and cheap pocket gadgets from chain stores who wouldn’t notice the loss. Nobody would miss something like _this_. What if she got caught with it? What if Catra got arrested? Why does Catra put her in these situations? Why does she let her? 

“How about you try it on, and then decide,” Catra suggests, leaning back and tapping the tips of her claws against the tile expectectantly, like she already knows how this is going to end. 

And she’s right. 

Adora weaves her arms through the sleeves, and delights in the warmth and the weight of it. It’s, ugh, it’s perfect. She doesn’t even need a mirror to know. 

“You’re welcome,” Catra quips. The corner of her lips lifts into a crooked smile, and she’s so damn pleased with herself. It’d be annoying if she weren’t so...so _Catra._

Adora continues her little test drive — shoving her hands in the pockets, rotating her arms and shoulders, noting the extra space between herself and the heavy material. “Kinda big though...” She flexes her unseen biceps through it. For test purposes, of course. 

“Duh, I sized up,” says Catra. “So it’ll still fit when you beef up and get all famous for knocking people over with a stick. You can, you know, wear it forever...” The subtle shift from cocky to demure pulls Adora away from admiring her new look. She lifts her eyes just in time to catch the blush dusting Catra’s cheeks. It makes her muscles melt. 

This is the Catra no one else sees. Catra, with her knack for picking fights and keeping their classmates at bay with a steely look and a biting remark. If only they saw her now — the shy bite of her lip, the pink hue of her nose, the languid blink of her eyes. 

No one else gets to see this, and sometimes, Adora thinks she’d like to keep it that way. 

So she smothers her into a bear hug. “Wow. You _like me_ like me, huh?” she teases. 

“No!” Small hands push against her arms, her stomach, her chest. Naturally, Adora tightens the embrace to get more of a rise out of her. “I don’t like you!” Catra objects into her shoulder.

The smile blooming on Adora’s face is untamable, and her rounding cheeks firm up into Catra’s temple. “‘Cause you _like me_ like me…”

“Not that either!”

“Come on,” Adora coos in her ear, swaying their bodies like she’s singing a lullaby. “Just admit it. Come on, pretty please, it is my birthday!” She snorts with laughter at her friend’s frustrated growls. The angrier she gets, the more it eggs her on to obnoxiously whisper, “It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.” 

“You’re so annoying!” Catra grits out and roughly pulls at the back of the jacket. “You know what? Give it back.”

“No!” Adora shrieks, catching her wrists. “Wait, Catra, don’t rip it.” 

She scoffs, “It better not rip for what I would’ve hypothetically paid for it.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“No, you don’t.” 

Adora bites the inside of her cheek, working through the endless strands of scenarios of all that could go wrong if the store found out, if Shadow Weaver found it, what she’d do to her, what she’d do to _Catra_ —

“Hey…” Catra breaks out of Adora’s now slackened grip on her to smooth down the front of the jacket. The motion soothes Adora, just a bit. “Trust me. There were plenty of these in the store. It won’t be much of a loss for them, but it’s a huge gain for you.” She tugs at the edge of the sleeve and winks, and it’s goofy and it’s _cute_ and it’s clear to Adora that returning the jacket was never an option in the first place.

She accepts the gift with all sincerity. “Thanks, Catra. I’ll never take it off.” 

Catra’s grin sinks into a serene smile. “Well, take it off to shower and stuff, idiot.”

“No, I don’t think I will. I think I’ll be a never-nude from now on.”

“A never-what...?!”

“You heard me.”

|-|

“Adora!” Glimmer emerges from the crowd, with Bow trailing close behind. “Are you okay? What the hell just happened?” 

“I don’t know...” Adora answers, a bit strained. She fists a hand against her chest, still reeling from the ripping sensation.

A large and gentle hand touches her back. “Did she just—” 

“Yeah.” 

“Why would she—”

“I _don’t_ know!” Her head is pounding. No, not pounding — _pulsing_. She’s inching towards a state of panic, fearing she’s losing control of herself.

“Come on! Let’s go after that psycho.” Glimmer grabs both of them by the waist, but Adora staggers out of her grip before she can poof them off on a wild goose chase.

“No,” she says, looking up at the roof, then out into the yard. “No way I’m leaving all of these people unattended, with a giant _fire,_ where I _live._ ” 

Bow and Glimmer follow her eyeline toward the mass of students, most having turned their attention back to whoever’s making a speech in the center of the circle, though every couple of seconds or so, someone casts a sneaky glance in their direction. 

Glimmer turns back to Adora, and her eyes go wide, gleaming dusty lilac in the low light, and her lips pucker in a sympathetic pout. She reaches up, cups Adora’s cheek and brushes away some wetness she hadn’t realized was there. “Aw, it’s okay. We’ll get you a new jacket. Don’t worry.” 

Adora flinches. She wipes her own cheek and looks at her hand. “Huh? No, it’s…” _Strange_. They’re tears. Though she would never get so emotional over a piece of clothing. She may be agitated — angry, even — but even so, Adora doesn’t cry. She doesn’t. Her body’s gone haywire. “It’s fine,” she says, wiping her face dry. 

“No, it’s not fine! Who does something like that?” Glimmer shouts, her fists clenched into tight little balls, radiating with palpable outrage. One thing about Adora’s fiery friend is: if she won’t surrender to the trivialities of her emotions, Glimmer will do it on her behalf. “Oh, she’s going to _pay_. Every penny. How much was it, anyway?”

“Oh... I don’t—“ 

“Adora...?” Scorpia approaches them with an air of caution, a far cry from her bursting-at-the-seams ebullience.

Adora tries a smile. “Scorpia? Hey.” 

“Geez, what was that? Are you okay? Is Catra okay?”

Glimmer’s still fuming. “Who cares if she’s okay? She just set someone’s clothes on fire!” 

“Scorpia, is she your friend? Catra, I mean?” Bow asks, draping a secure arm around his girlfriend’s waist, and whether it's to comfort Glimmer or contain her, it’s hard to tell.

Scorpia rakes through her striking white hair, meticulously slicked back for the occasion. She thinks with a limpid expression, each new thought on display for the world to see. “Well, friend. Roommate. Friend...mate. How about I text her? Maybe this is all a misunderstanding!” She pulls out her phone and starts pecking at it.

“What’s there to misunderstand? She’s clearly coo coo in the head!” Glimmer points a finger at her head and spins it. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell my mom about this! Her little cheer career is _over_.” 

“Maybe Scorpia’s right,” Bow offers, his furrowed brows the only indications of frustration. “We should at least try to get her side of the story before we go off ending anyone’s career.” 

”I mean,” Scorpia starts while distracted from fussing with the tiny keypad on her phone. “She’s been acting strangely all day. I mean, I only met her yesterday, but… God, these pincers,” she cuts off with a mild grunt. “Anyways, when we crossed paths this morning, she got super quiet. Well, even more quiet than usual. Barely said a word to me all day after we saw you guys.”

The three of them stare at her, unsure of what to make of any of that information. Come to think of it, when Adora locked eyes with Catra earlier that day, she’d been staring straight back at her. 

“She just said she saw a ghost? Couldn’t tell if she was being literal or poetic. She’s kinda _mysterious_ , ya know...” Scorpia continues.

Glimmer, now in a full frenzy of worry, materializes out of Bow’s arms so she can use her hands to properly get her point across. “ _Okay_ , all this just proves my point! Something’s not right with this chick!” 

“Wait. Have any of you met her before?” Scorpia asks.

“Nope.” 

“Hell no!” 

“...Adora?” Scorpia nudges her. 

“Not before today, no...” she answers, and then she’s given a gift. A stretch of silence. An opportunity to change the subject. “Hey! This is supposed to be a party! Our last hoorah before we’re bogged down in practice,” Adora points to herself, then to Glimmer, “and rehearsals,” then to Bow, “and research papers. We should be having _fun_? Who wants a shot?!” she rallies with an overenthusiastic whoop and a smile that’s all teeth and no eyes. In truth she doesn’t, not really, but she desperately needs something to calm herself down, steady her erratic heart rate, because even though she doesn’t remember meeting Catra—

_“Guess you won’t be needing this anymore.”_

_“...letting go of the past.”_

_“Sounds like you don’t…”_

_“...wear it forever...”_

_“Remember correctly.”_

She’s not so sure she hasn’t.

Her chest still aches.

|-|

_Buzz._

Catra’s had her fill of fire for the night, but her legs burn like hell. Getting to Mara— _Adora’s_ cottage in Scorpia’s car was a quick, easy, seven-minute trip. Coming back on foot? Something else entirely. Still, she’ll be damned if she stops before she’s as far away from her as her legs will carry her. 

_Buzz._

One thing. 

She’d simply wanted one thing. Something to call her own. Something that couldn’t be taken from her. Something that couldn’t just up and leave her.

But — of course — she should’ve known this olive branch was poisonous. (They always are.) She should’ve known that lurking behind the door to a promising new future was a phantom of her past, no longer skittering about the corners of her mind but front and center and free of all memory of her. 

Free of her. 

_Buzz._

Catra sprints despite the stinging pressure behind her eyes, despite her screaming muscles and searing lungs as she slogs her way up the hellishly steep hill leading to the campus gates. If she’s lucky, the physical pain will outmatch the pain she can’t put words to. That, she can handle. 

It’s when she finally, _finally_ reaches the threshold of campus that something breaks. “Fuck!” Her legs give out underneath her, and her knees hit the pavement with a brutal force. She gives the sob rising in the back of her throat a good fight, but it tumbles out anyway. “Fuck!” she cries out again, burying her face in the crook of her elbow in a useless attempt to push it all back. 

_Buzz._

See, Catra knows how to be lonely. 

No, not “lonely.” Alone. Independent. 

She knows how to survive, how to adapt, to keep her soft underbelly protected, tucked away and suited up, for good measure. Vulnerabilities have no value. It’s worthless to one half of the world and bait to the other, so she keeps the doors locked, the curtains drawn, and the porch light off, so to speak. She’s even got an electric fence if someone gets too close. People usually get the message.

So it’s disappointing— No. It’s pathetic how easy it felt to be next to Adora after all this time, like hearing a childhood song and still remembering the lyrics from top to bottom, and it’s disgusting that she could still stand to hold her solid hand again, if only for a minute.

But what she couldn’t do was stand there and watch her try to make pleasant small talk and ask her about _home_ as if that word has no weight in it at all and credit that demon woman for _her_ work with a straight face and smile at her without a trace of regret, or hate, or conceit, or longing, or anything that would reflect the years they spent by each other’s side. It made her skin crawl, Adora playing nice to her. Because Catra needs so much more than just _nice_.

And even if getting rid of that god-forsaken jacket didn’t feel as vindicating as she’d hoped, it felt fair. It was a start. Enough has been taken from her. She gets to take, too. 

_Buzz._

The incessant vibrations in her back pocket bring her back to reality, a stark reminder that to any outside eye, she would just be some random girl having a breakdown at the school entrance. 

Panting and blurry-eyed, she reluctantly checks her messages:

 _crab girl (11:24pm): Hey Catre are you good?  
_ _crab girl (11:24pm): Catra* sorry!  
_ _crab girl (11:25pm): How much did you drink? Did you know that was actually Adora’s jacket?  
_ _crab girl (11:25pm): Are you in the room? Do you need me to come check on you?  
_ _crab girl (11:37pm): I’m coming to check on you_

Well. Shit. 

Catra silences and stuffs her phone back in her pocket. The last thing she wants to deal with is people, and the (almost) last person she wants to deal with is Scorpia, all curious and prying and eager to please. Catra doesn’t need all of that. She just wants to be left alone. 

And where could she go to be left alone? 

She ends up roaming the pathways of campus, empty at this time of night, but she still feels exposed. If only she’d worn her hoodie instead. 

The buildings loom larger than they did before, less inviting. She can hear them questioning her right to be there, and she doesn’t have an answer for them. 

There’s a building shadowed beside the one Scorpia pointed out earlier that Catra simply remembered as The Weed Building. Krytis, she said it was called?

It’ll do. If no one ever goes in there, it’s her best bet.

Granted, the building looks even less inviting at night, but that’s all for the better. She tries the handle. It’s not locked. 

Inside it smells of dust and rotting wood. It could be worse. Some parts of the building have fresher paint and flooring than the others. It’s clear they tried renovating but abandoned the project halfway. A lot of the overhead lights are blown or on their last leg, casting the halls in either flickering or full darkness. Any sane person would find it creepy, but Catra finds in it an eerie comfort, devoid of all noise but her thoughts and the ceaseless hum of electricity. She finds a corridor that’s dimmed to her liking and takes up shop on one of the circular window sills, hugging a knee to her chest while letting the other foot brush the vinyl floor.

In her moment of weakness, she rolls up her jacket sleeve to frown at the pin lodged underneath, hating the way it shimmers bright in the silver moonlight, how it seems to glow in the dark. She should’ve gotten rid of it a long time ago, but it’s been too full _._ Full of solace. Full of torment. It needles deep in her gut whenever she needs something to feel, whether it’s warmth or rage. They both keep the cold out. 

Catra had accepted that she’d likely never see her again, and if she did, it wouldn’t be pretty. It’d probably end with spilt blood and fatal revelations. Can’t say that she was proven wrong, but she could have never predicted that she’d be met with a stranger wearing Adora as a costume. That the memories she kept close and tucked under her sleeve are now hers and hers alone to deal with. 

With an acrid taste in her mouth, Catra wonders how it happened, whether Shadow Weaver sweet-talked her into it. Or maybe Adora did it readily. Asked for it. 

Not that it matters either way. 

Either way, Adora didn’t want her. She already knew that. She just didn’t know that she didn’t want her to this extent. To the point that she was willing to extract every piece of Catra out of her own existence. 

When the tears come again, she doesn’t bother pushing them back. She lets them be a secret between her and the abandoned halls. 

Catra‘s known loneliness. But not like this. 

|-|

Adora shuts off her alarm as soon as it rings. After all, it’s not like she went to sleep. 

How could she after spending the tail end of the night with Bow and Glimmer cleaning up leftover trash, filling up barrels upon barrels of water for Mermista to douse out the fire, and delegating designated drivers to wrangle the insufferably drunk home?

And how could she when, now that the cottage is cleared out and halfway decent, she can’t close her eyes for more than two seconds without seeing narrow pupils bathed in blue and yellow and a smile that turns her blood to lava? 

No one’s ever looked at Adora the way that girl did, so laced with hate. She can still feel the sting of her malice, the bite in her tone. 

The incident replays in Adora’s head over and over and over and how does she have her _pin_ and why did she call her _She-Ra_? It hits a terrible chord, one that makes the muscles in the back of her neck cramp and tighten. Adora can count on one hand the number of people who know about her situation, and none of them are _her._ None of it makes any sense. 

A bubbling fear and a subtle fury gnaws in her gut. Something is wrong.

Adora pushes out a long, heavy sigh and stares at the ceiling, entertains the idea of forgoing her morning run for yet another attempt at sleep. Maybe she could manage a few hours before breakfast. But then again, considering the chaos of the night before, what she really needs is something to ground her, something routine and reliable. So jog it is. 

She takes it easy on the bike ride there, and the sweeping apex of Altair is already well into the sky by the time she reaches campus. With her eyes dry from the lack of sleep, Adora finds she has to put in extra effort to keep alert, so when she sees a figure moving in the distance, she figures her eyes are simply playing tricks on her.

Only they’re not.

With an unexpected sense of relief underneath a thick layer of dread, she quickly realizes it’s Catra, of all people, coming down the steps of Krytis, of all places. 

Adora’s lips pull into something like a snarl and a smile. From there her legs take the reins, picking up speed until she skids to a stop in front of her. “Hey!” 

Honestly, she looks as worn as Adora feels. She’s dressed in the same clothes as last night, her eyes rimmed red, and when she snarks, “Aw, sweetie, were you waiting up for me?”, her words don’t have the same cutting edge as before. Her voice sounds rougher, hoarse. 

Adora can’t help but wonder exactly how she spent the rest of her night. “You okay?” The question slips out, hot and slick like oil on her tongue. In her defense, it’s six in the morning and the building is basically a dead zone. She’s not even sure what it’s for, and by the looks of it, Catra could have been sleeping in there. Or maybe she could be high? Most people smoke in Plumeria, but this could be an option, too. Less foot traffic.

Catra doesn’t answer, only shoulders past her.

“Can we talk about last night?” Adora asks Catra’s back from the seat of her bike. 

Catra keeps walking with even steps, ignoring but not running off. 

So Adora’s a little sleep-deprived and doesn’t have much patience to spare. Letting her bike tumble over with a metal thunk, she run up next to her. She grabs Catra’s arm and spins her around. It draws out an unpleasant hiss, but it gets her attention. “I’m sorry, let me try again,” Adora says in the firmest tone she can manage. “We _need_ to talk about last night.” 

Catra wrenches her arm away, but doesn’t look at her. “What’s there to talk about?” 

Adora glowers. “What’s there to talk about? How about you, I don’t know, tossing my stuff into a fire? And why you have my pin, maybe?” She reaches for her left sleeve, certain that’s the one she had it hidden in, but Catra swiftly swings her arms behind her back. 

She rakes her eyes over Adora as if appraising her, then chuckles to herself, and once again turns on her heel. 

“Hey!”

“If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not getting one.”

“And I guess reimbursement is too much to ask?” Adora huffs at Catra’s retreating figure, but it doesn’t surprise her when she doesn’t get a response this time. 

It’s infuriatingly impressive how she can be fire and ice all in one small body. But she has to have a crack, an opening, some way to get her to unfurl. It’s clearly going to take a delicate hand.

But Adora doesn’t have time for delicate. So she tackles her instead. 

“Get off me!” Catra grounds out in the tussle, but Adora manages to pin her arms down.

Inwardly preening herself on her superior upper body strength, Adora attempts to reason with her. “Look, it’s just a jacket. I don’t care about that stuff. I just want to know why you did it.” Catra doesn’t meet her eyes, so Adora watches the way her temple jumps as she clenches and unclenches her jaw. “You called me something strange last night,” Adora continues, easing off. “Is there something you—“

“Are you asking if I know about weird little episodes? No, of course not.” With a snort, she sits up on her elbows, smirks right at her and tacks on an impetuous, “She-Ra.”

Adora flinches and pushes her back down, a little more forceful than more, curls her fists in the front of her jacket. “Stop calling me that! What are you, some spy? A stalker?”

Catra rolls her eyes and _laughs_ , high-pitched and full-bodied (and pleasant to hear, if it were under different circumstances). “Oh, please. Your little sports fans must have gotten to your head. You really think you’re worth stalking?” 

“Then what’s…” Adora falters, then reignites. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me how you have my stuff. Tell me everything _._ ” 

Catra runs a hand down her face, a humorless laugh crowning in her lips. “I can’t believe this...” 

Adora’s grip tightens, and if she had the time, if she didn’t feel like she’s toeing the edge of a cliff, she’d hate the desperate edge in her voice when she says, “Please. Just tell what your deal is. I— I just need a straight answer.” 

Catra bores into her with her ice and fire eyes, and for a glorious second, they soften into something that feels human, and she says, “I think it's Shadow Weaver you need to be talking to.” And before Adora can ask anymore questions, she shoves her off, rises and springs away at a dizzying speed. Adora gapes after her, stunned by the realization that if Catra had really wanted to get away from her, she could’ve easily done it at any point. 

Her words don't sink in completely. Adora doesn’t let them. She keeps them suspended, floating above her. 

With heavy limbs, Adora absently goes and picks up her fallen bike. 

She rides to the track field like she planned. 

She runs.

And runs.

And runs.

And runs.

And—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little info for clarification purposes that doesn't quite fit seamlessly in the text: She-Ra in this modern day Etheria is an ancient, legendary, messianic figure, though there's no religion built around her or anything. though Adora has similar abilities, she is not actually She-Ra. when Catra calls her that, it's just a dig. it'd be like someone calling you Jesus because you just so happen to have a knack for walking on water, turning water to wine, and/or rising from the dead. 
> 
> chapter title from my personal catra theme song, liability by lorde.
> 
> I hope everyone's safe and well, and thank you for the kudos and comments! they truly light my fire ^^


	4. serenia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you saw me change the title of this fic, no you didn’t. 
> 
> yes, you did.
> 
> this chapter is a long one, sorry? you're welcome? idk, but hopefully it compensates for the fact that i'm not the speediest writer in the coffee shop.
> 
> anyways, I hope you're all safe and well!

There’s much to gawk at in Bright Moon, and the showers are no exception. 

Even if they’re communal, they look like something out of an ethereal spa — more marble and porcelain, shower curtains that appear sheer on the outside but are deceptively opaque, rain shower heads built into the fucking ceilings. Miles above the gym showers she used to sneak her way into. Worlds above the bathrooms at any of her previous “accommodations.”

Catra grabs one of the many fresh towels from one of the built in shelves and chooses the stall furthest from the door, silently thanking all the stars in the sky that it’s too early for anyone to be up yet, so she has the entire space to herself. She sheds her clothes that have grown sticky on her body, careful not to look into any of the mirrors attached to the wall, not to look too far down, and yeah, everything _hurts,_ but the hot water gives the perfect amount of sting when she steps in.

She keeps the shower quick. She always does. Then it’s a short walk through the curving halls to get back to her dorm, and it’s still early so there’s no way she won’t make it into her room unbothered. She swipes herself in, inwardly wincing at the access beep that might as well be a siren in the silence. After shutting the door softly behind her, she’s met with wild and frantic eyes.

“Catra!” Scorpia envelopes Catra into her arms and spins her around. “Where have you _been_? I’ve been worried sick about you!” She releases her only to dial a number on her phone and bring it to her ear. “Hi. It’s me. Again. Just wanted to let you know that I’ve found her, and she’s a-okay!” She hangs up. “Campus police. God, what happened to you last night?”

Disregarding the pesky thorn of guilt for supposedly keeping her roommate up, Catra pulls the towel tighter around herself and gruffly pushes past her. Sadly, Scorpia’s twice her size with the density of a boulder, so it’s not exactly the power move she was gunning for. “I went on a walk.”

Scorpia follows. “A walk that took you all night?”

“Why do you care? You don’t have anything better to do than worry about some girl you just met?”

“I mean, you’re my roommate and my teammate and my friend!”

“We’re not friends.”

Scorpia only falters slightly, like a lion struck by a plastic dart. “Okay. Best two out of three, then. But can I ask, what that whole thing was with Adora because—“

Catra whirls to face her, fangs bared, one hand readily perched on her door handle. “You know, Scorpia, I think it’s time we set some roommate boundaries, so no one gets hurt. Here are mine. One. Don’t barge in my room without knocking. Two. Keep those claws to _yourself_. And three. You mind your own business. I’ll mind mine.”

And again, Scorpia just smiles and leans easily back against the wall. She’s just as impenetrable as she looks, apparently. “Hey, I can live with that. So am I breaking rule number three if I ask why you haven’t decorated your room, yet?”

“Why would I do that? And why were you in my room again?” First time in her life she’s granted real, honest privacy and she gets stuck with the world’s nosiest roommate. 

“Ah, so it’s rule number one I broke!” Scorpia makes a motion like she’s snapping her claws. If her claws could snap. “Well, when you didn’t come back I had to peep in to see if you snuck in when I wasn’t looking, and man, it looks bleak in there. No offense, but don’t you want to personalize it? Make it your home?”

Catra’s eyes narrow dangerously, and she turns the knob. “It’s got four walls, a roof, and a bed. Home enough for me.” With that, Catra moves inside and slams the door behind her. 

“Suit yourself,” Scorpia hollers through the wall. “But I’ve got some extra string lights if you want!”

“Go. Away,” Catra murmurs, drifting her eyes closed. It’s not intended for Scorpia to hear. It’s not really intended for Scorpia at all.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“So what’s in the Fright Zone that you have to see so badly that you’re willing to give up your last day of freedom?” asks Glimmer, scrolling through her phone from the window nook of Adora’s kitchen, the mid-morning light illuminating her from behind.

Adora sullenly pulls on a pair of sneakers in the archway. She was planning on slipping onto a train without notice, but seeing as she didn’t call and/or text Bow and/or Glimmer to let them know, she wasn’t that shocked when they quite literally appeared out of nowhere on her doorstep, eventually suggesting that they all go together, insisting that it’d be _like a fun mini road trip_ as if she was headed to a luxurious resort and not an industrial wasteland.

She sighs, “Shadow Weaver, and really guys, you don’t have to drive me. I can catch the 12:05.” She ties her shoes up and stomps the floor a few times so they’re secure, maybe a little harder than what’s necessary. 

Glimmer’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. “Shadow Weaver? Ultimate helicopter mom Shadow Weaver?” 

“Do you even speak to her anymore?” Bow asks with a skeptical eyebrow raised, delicately nibbling the crust of a pizza slice he managed to nab before being whisked away by his girlfriend.

“Yeah, and not really, no,” Adora answers, her head now stuffed in the refrigerator. 

“So, why the trip?”

“Because. Catra.” She knocks the door shut with her elbow, two water bottles in one hand and a banana in the other. The atmosphere shifts. Adora _knows_ that Bow and Glimmer are glancing at each other behind her back, doing that thing where they speak through silence. 

“What does a girl you’ve known less than 24 hours have to do with this?” Glimmer asks, her eyes squinted into almonds.

And Adora doesn’t know how to respond. She doesn’t expect them to understand either way. Hell, she doesn’t even understand herself, but if she was taking the trip alone, then at least she wouldn’t need to explain.

She busies herself at the table with stuffing her snacks, keys and wallet into her satchel as she speaks, moreso to herself than to the room. “She knows Shadow Weaver, and… I don’t know. I feel… I have this feeling about her. I don’t know how to describe it.” 

“I think the word you’re looking for is hate, Adora,” Glimmer chimes.

“No, it’s…” 

“Did you know my mom didn’t even make her try out for the team? She just offered her a spot!” Glimmer groans and rubs her hands down her face, exposing the bright pink flesh of her eye socket. “Ugh, she’s got to stop taking on these pet projects.” 

Bow swivels to face her from his seat at the table. “Was that a pun?” 

“What? No.”

“Just checking.” He swivels away.

A distant cry of shame calls Adora’s name, causing sweltering heat to build between her ears. She snaps, “Was _I_ not a pet project?” 

Glimmer blinks twice, then slowly responds, “No, Adora, you were my friend _._ And my mom loves you. You’re practically her second daughter.” 

The platitude is never as effective as Glimmer thinks it is, but Adora doesn’t speak on it. Instead, she tosses her bag over her shoulder, trying to keep her voice light when she says, “C’mon. We should get going.” Then she heads for the door, towards Bow’s car, leaving her friends to catch up.

  
  
  
  
  
  


There’s a peculiar weight that sets in when returning to the town you grew up in for the first time. First, there’s relief, the pride of having made it out, of proving to be larger, stronger, _better_ than the walls it imposed on you; then a hint of melancholy, a tender grieving for all that you once were; and then that pinch of fear, for all that you still are. 

“I won’t be long,” says Adora, sticking her head through Bow’s car window now that they’re parked in front of her old home, the summer heat harsh on her back without the breeze of the air conditioning. She points along the road ahead of them. “If you head that way, there are some nice mom-and-pop shops you can go to, but don’t go any further than Lashor Road, okay?” she warns gravely. “And if someone stops you for directions, keep walking, got it?”

“Got it,” Bow affirms, gripping the steering wheel a bit too tightly. Glimmer’s gnawing on her nails in the passenger seat. 

If Adora was a better liar, she’d reassure them, tell them that the Fright Zone isn’t as bad as it looks. But she’s not.

“Good. I’ll call when I’m ready.” She taps the roof of the car and walks up the path towards the house. When she doesn’t hear an engine rev behind her, she stops and turns to find Bow still parked and both of her friends staring at her with concerned eyes. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bow answers. “We just want to make sure you make it in safe.” Glimmer nods behind him. 

Adora waves them off. “Guys, I promise, I’m fine—“

“It’s what friends do, Adora!”

She knows better than to argue once Bow pulls that trump card, so she forces a tight smile and continues up the path, up the steps. The doorbell sounds off a discordant jangle. _Broken again,_ she notes.

If she listens closely — and she does — she can hear thumps of feet running up or down the stairs and then a low grumbling complaint about unannounced visitors right before Shadow Weaver opens the door. 

She’s in the worst shape Adora’s ever seen her.

When she was little, she thought Shadow Weaver to have a withering kind of beauty — long, thick jet black hair falling to her waist in waves, piercing green eyes that were ensnaring, terrifying, but at times, kind. Now, her hair has thinned significantly. Her skin, once the shade of ash and sage, has faded to a ghostly stone gray, and the veins webbing her hands, her wrists, her neck, are dark and protruding. 

Seeing age devour her this way, a well of pity deepens in her stomach. Perhaps she should put her feelings aside to look after her more often. 

“Adora. My, what a pleasant surprise,” the woman greets, stoned-faced.

Adora clears her throat. “Hi, Ms. Weaver. Um, do you want me to take a look at the doorbell? I’m sure I can try and—“

“No need,” Shadow Weaver answers, her tone clipped and even, though not cold. “It’ll only break again in a month. Come in.” She waves her inside, and Adora waves her anxious friends away. 

Like clockwork, she takes her shoes off by the door and follows the woman in. The house somehow still reeks of cigarettes, even though Shadow Weaver has long quit. Perhaps she’s started back up again. Perhaps the smoke has melded into the walls, and she was desensitized to the smell before. 

Shadow Weaver leads her from the foyer to the kitchen that smells painfully of bleach and vinegar. The kids have obviously just finished Sunday morning cleaning, their hands probably pruned and raw by now. The outdated white appliances gleam against the flat yellow of the walls, but it’s easy to spot a few small dark stains, so someone’s going to have to do a second cleaning after Shadow Weaver’s inspection. Whoever’s on her bad side this week, most likely.

_The tip of a tail drags into the kitchen._

God, she does not miss this place. 

“What’s the occasion? I haven’t heard from you in months.” Shadow Weaver opens a cabinet and pulls out a black mug. “Tea?” 

Adora hovers by the doorway. “I’m sorry. School and everything gets busy. And no, thanks.”

“It’s astonishing how one can pour years into raising a child and suddenly it’s like pulling teeth to get a call back once they run off to college,” Shadow Weaver says as if she’s commenting on the weather. 

“Right. Sorry,” Adora apologizes, dipping her head and digging her nails into her forearms as something red and murky swirls inside her. She feels dirtier here now. “How are things?” she tries. “How are all the kids?”

“They’re well.” Shadow Weaver continues to make her tea with the kind of fluidity that only she can perform. “Not as well-behaved as you were, but I suppose an obedient child is hard to come by, considering your backgrounds.”

Tentatively, Adora steps forward. “I came because I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh? And what about?” A dark eyebrow lifts as she pours a smooth stream of boiling water into her mug. The scent of lavender tea softens the antiseptic stench.

“So there’s this girl at my school and—“

“Surely you’re not coming to me for relationship advice.” 

“Of course not,” Adora retorts, so assured it’s downright insulting. “But I think you might know her. Her name’s Catra.” 

“Ah…”

The light in the room shifts, subtle and familiar. The same way it does when clouds pass over the light of the moons. As though night has suddenly fallen outside. Shadow Weaver hadn’t even moved, but it doesn’t take a genius. 

“What are you doing?” Adora asks, a spark in her nerves. 

“Just giving us a bit of privacy.” Shadow Weaver glides to the table and sits. “Go on.”

“What do you know about her?”

“I know that you should stay away from her.” She blows over the scalding water.

“Why?” Adora’s brows draw down like a bridge over her eyes.

“Take my word for it,” Shadow Weaver warns. “That girl is poison. I’m shocked Bright Moon would even consider admitting that thug.”

Adora advances, her quest for clarity overwhelming her trepidation. “How do you know her?”

“The real question is: why are you so concerned? You should be focusing on your studies, not on some girl you don’t even know.”

“Well, she certainly knows me.”

A pregnant pause fills the space. Shadow Weaver looks like she’s chewing on something, then she finally says, “She stayed here for a time.”

This is when Adora’s heart quickens, when her breath grows ragged. An anticipating lurch implodes in her gut. “When? I’ve lived here for almost as long as I can remember, and she’s close to my age. How wouldn’t I have known?” Adora’s close enough to see the corners of her wrinkled mouth turn up slightly, and she comes to the conclusion that maybe everyone is in on this sick joke but her. “I’ve met her before, haven’t I?” This is not a question. “ _Tell me._ ” And this isn’t a request.

“It’s true. You have met her,” admits Shadow Weaver, a statue of calm and collect. “And she made you miserable in the end. We had to have her removed from the house. _You_ wanted her gone.”

Adora clenches her shaky hands down tight. “So why don’t I remember any of this?”

“Because I gave you what you wanted,” Shadow Weaver says, standing. “A chance to move forward, free of any of the pain she inflicted on you.”

The abrupt movement sends Adora retreating back towards the doorway. “So, you...what? Erased her from my memory or something? How could I possibly ever want that?”

Shadow Weaver remains composed, the tips of her fingers pressed together in an impeccably pragmatic stance, her tone mercilessly stoic. A reminder that age has made her everything but weak. “I don’t think I need to remind you that magic is banned by the ECAA. Considering the erratic state you were in, you could have gotten yourself kicked off the team. Your grades were falling. At that rate, you would never have gotten recruited. You would have never made it out of the Fright Zone. I did you a kindness, Adora. I did it out of love. You should be grateful.”

Adora’s stunned into paralysis by her lack of denial or even remorse. She knew Shadow Weaver had the ability to monitor and manipulate. She could never so much as move five inches without Shadow Weaver knowing. The day she left for BMU was like a prison release, freedom from the tyranny she called affection, but she had thought there was an intention of decency embedded in her cruelty, and now, she’s beginning to see just how foolish that sounds.

_Oh, Adora. Just as dumb and naive as ever._

“Well, I did all that, okay, so give them back!” she demands as her vision blurs with a frenzy, her fists curled up at her sides. 

“Over my dead body,” Shadow Weaver mutters.

“What was that?”

“It doesn’t work that way, child. I warned you. Once they’re gone…” She waves a hoary hand vaguely towards the sky. The meaning is clear. “Besides,” she reasons, “if you let her get into your head again, you risk losing control of your magic, meaning you risk being banned from athletics, meaning you lose your scholarship, and how will you pay for your fancy school then?”

Adora shakes her head, shakes off such a possibility. “That won’t happen.” 

“Are you willing to take that risk? To waste all that untapped potential?”

“Do you understand how fuc—” Shadow Weaver narrows her eyes. “Messed up this is? You do understand that this is a complete violation, right?” 

“Adora, I was trying to help,” Shadow Weaver insists.

Adora’s hands fly to her head, as if she can find what’s been lost crawling in the scalp of her hair. The room feels smaller than it did before. Her skin warms and tingles like static blooming underneath it. “How do I know what’s real and what's not?” she asks no one in particular.

Shadow Weaver closes in, towering over her, but no longer so stern, now sounding smaller and more pitiable by the second. “Adora, I’ve only ever wanted what’s best for you.”

“Stop.”

“You know you’ve always been special to me.”

_“Stop.”_

“I’d never want to hurt you. All I’ve ever tried to do is love you. You were always been like a daughter to—“

“I said _stop!”_ Adora covers her ears with her forearms to block out her voice, her words so gentle in their violence, like a feather licking an open wound. “You don’t have the right to say that, and you had no right to...to _brainwash_ me! All you’ve ever tried to do is control me, and that—that is not— _love._ ”

And then Adora remembers something. 

When she tries to leave the room, whatever cloak Shadow Weaver has on the room keeps her locked in, crackles against her skin at high voltage. “Let me out,” she commands, low and chesty.

“Adora—“ A cold hand brushes her arm. 

_“Don’t touch me!”_ The heat of her blood warms. The static in her veins grows sharper, crisper. The room glows bright and oversaturated. Harsh lines blur into soft edges. Before she can stop and equalize herself, she propels the older woman away from her with unexpected force, enough to send her flying into the far wall. Adora hears a low, pained groan rumble out of her. She looks down at her own glowing hands, horrified.

“Shadow Weaver,” she breathes, apologetic and pleading. “Please. Let me out,” she says again, and this time, Shadow Weaver listens. Adora bolts, not out of the house but up the stairs, up to her old room, which is fortunately empty.

The room looks almost the same, and in the same breath, completely different. But she’s not there to ogle. There’s something she needs to find. 

Because there were always little things that Adora couldn’t explain, most small and innocuous like stains and marks she couldn’t recall the origin of, but it’s an old house with rotating young residents so it made sense, but there was always something that bugged her, a tug on her curiosity, a possession over something that wasn’t hers to possess.

There. Behind the bed, engraved in the wall. In what looks like claw marks.

C + A 4VER

_Catra and Adora._

“Don’t you see it’s happening already?” Shadow Weaver croaks, low and triumphant, from behind her. “You won’t last long this way. All of our hard work will go down the drain.”

Adora struggles to form words through the ringing in her ears and all the emotional noise. She shoves the bed back against the wall and squares in front of the woman who has shaped her in ways that she never asked for. 

She opens her mouth and speaks like the sensible, mature, _well-balanced_ woman she’s supposed to be. “I am going to get them back. And unless you’re going to help me, I never want to see or hear from you again.”

And she walks down the stairs and out of the house at an even pace to join her friends, who are already there waiting for her, who were probably waiting for her the whole time.

“So how was it?” Bow peers at her from the rear view.

Adora curs up against the car door, digging her knuckles into her forehead hard enough to leave a mark. “Just get me out of here. Please.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


There was a story Shadow Weaver would tell her as a child on a sleepless night: _The Tale of the Forgotten Princess._

Her name was Serenia. 

She was born to a pair of kings that ruled over the top half of the world. Now kings they were, but they weren’t the brightest of the bunch. Those who gain power by principle rarely are. There were whispered jests among the court that the couple wouldn’t be able to distinguish their own daughter from a piece of fruit. To test their theory, two of the kings’ most powerful lords and closest confidantes devised a plan to steal little Serenia from the palace and replace her with the ripest apple they could find.

The kings were none the wiser.

Meanwhile, Serenia was left stranded and scared under the apple tree the men had plucked from until a benevolent witch came along and took her in as her own. She raised Serenia to be strong and whip smart, and Serenia was happy. Only she couldn’t help but wonder what life would have been like if she hadn’t been taken away from her family and from her palace. Would she have been happier? Surely her family missed her.

So one fateful night, she stole away from the witch’s home to find her way to the palace. When guards asked her what her business was with the kings, she replied, “Why, I’m their daughter. I am Serenia.”

And they laughed and laughed and laughed.

“But you couldn’t be!” they said. “The one and only Princess Serenia is already here! Come, foolish child,ser her with your own eyes.”

They let her into the castle and brought her before the throne of the kings. When asked once again what business she had with the kings, she said, “Why, I’m your daughter. I am Serenia.”

The kings exchanged a look and burst into tearful laughter, too, and then exclaimed, “You couldn’t possibly be our child! Why, our daughter is right here.” And from the pocket of his robe, he pulls out a black, rotten, mushy, smelly apple _._ The same one from all those years ago.

“But that’s an apple,” she exclaimed. “Can’t you see? King Gabriel, don’t you see I have your ocean eyes? King Francis, don’t you see I have your golden hair? How can you look at me and not see your own flesh and blood?”

But they didn’t recognize her at all. In fact, they had her locked up for treachery for the nonsense she was spewing. Seven years, she spent in a cold, dark cell. 

Until one night, a ghost appeared before her and beckoned Serenia by name. She weakly crawled towards the voice until she recognized that it was the witch calling her, who took care of her all of her life, and then her cell magically opened. 

The witch took Serenia into her arms, and Serenia asked, “How did you find me? How did you get me out?”

“Don’t you see?” answered the witch. “The blood of the heart will always be richer than the blood of the womb.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


_Smoothie._

_Kingdom._

_Smoothie Kingdom._

The signs jubilantly flash neon pink and blue in the splendor of one of Bright Moon’s _eleven_ dining halls. 

It really says something that a dumb job at a smoothie shop might be one of the highlights of Catra’s accomplishments thus far. She used to beg Shadow Weaver to let her get a part-time job, but the response was always, _“You barely pull your weight around here. How do you expect to do it somewhere else?”_ before sending her to clean the bathrooms for the third time that week. And then she’d have the nerve to throw a fit whenever Catra took matters into her own hands, literally, figuratively. If only she could see her now — chopping and blending fruit like a true upstanding member of society.

If only she was getting fucking paid for it.

“Our best sellers are the Dragon Berry and the Oh, Snapple,” Perfuma explains to Catra. They sit at a table close enough to watch the shop in case the line gets out of hand, but it’s so close to dinner, only the freakiest of the health freaks would be clamoring for beefed up juice at this point. An arrangement of smoothie samples sits in a line between them, conveniently forming a rainbow gradient along the table. Perfuma continues, “The Dragon Berry is packed with super fruits like dragon fruit and goji berries — also known as the fruit of life for their ability to defend against DNA and mitochondrial damage.” 

“Uh-huh,” Catra says, regarding the small cup housing fuschia-toned liquid. “Can I drink it now?”

Perfuma nods, so Catra does, throwing it back like a shot. 

“What do you think?” the beach blonde asks, hands clasped eagerly under her chin.

Catra replies with a fake, toothy grin, ”Tastes like home.”

That is to say, it doesn’t taste like much of anything, but Catra supposes the indulgence factor isn’t what brings the boys to the yard. 

Perfuma’s none the wiser, though, by the way her light blonde eyelashes glisten with welled up tears. “Catra,” she sighs. “That is so beautiful. Where is home for you?”

Catra “doesn’t hear” her question and pokes at the cup with the yellow smoothie instead. “This the apple one?”

If Perfuma notices, she spares her the trouble. “The Oh, Snapple, yes,” she nods. “The apples contain quercetin and pectin, perfect for defending against free radicals and detoxifying the body.”

Catra downs that one as well. “Like college students actually care about detoxing and free radicals and all that,” she snorts, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“They do after a night of hardcore binge drinking,” Perfuma contests, tilting her head and primly tucking a strand of sun-bleached hair behind her ear. Even the way she says _hardcore_ sounds floral. “You should’ve seen this place this morning. Everyone wanted to get their hands on a Green Machine after last night, even me!”

“Even you, huh?”

“Yeah! I’m usually not much of a drinker, you know, because alcohol lowers your vibration, but,” she shrugs airily, “I got a little carried away.” Then she leans forward, chin on her palm and her lips curled up into a sweet, but penetrating smile. “I suppose we both did.” 

Catra pierces her with a laser of a stare.

“I’m not judging, Catra.” Perfuma continues, smile still fixed on her face, piercing back with a kinder blade. “I just hope it gave you the release you were hoping for.”

“Are you ladies done with the tasting yet?” A tiny girl with a sleek black bob and blue eyeliner sharp on her monolids walks up to their table. “It’s time for my break.”

Perfuma beams at her in greeting. “Frosta! Almost. Catra and I were just talking about the importance of detox.”

“The importance of detox,” Catra repeats, sizing Perfuma up. “Right.”

“Well, hurry up. I’ve been on my feet since eleven,” says Frosta, plopping down in a chair at the adjacent table. “If I have to serve one more hungover asshole who can’t tell the difference between hemp protein and pea, I’m going to scream.”

Catra, who can’t tell the difference between hemp protein and pea, leans back in her seat and scoffs, “Barbarians.” Inwardly, she grimaces. Something’s got to be heinously wrong with their protein if it’s getting mistaken for urine.

Frosta scrutinizes Catra and asks, loud and tinny, “Are you that girl that threw Adora’s jacket in the fire at Burning Van?”

Great. So this is going to be a _thing_ now. 

“Yeah.” Catra holds Frosta’s gaze with an iron grip and leans forward in her seat. “And what about it?”

“Nothing.” Frosta doesn’t waver, but a mischievous flare warms her eyes. “It sounded pretty cool. I mean, no one would ever fuck with Adora like that, but if I saw my ex at a party, I’d do the same thing.” The girl’s aloof persona is eclipsed by a childlike meekness when she adds, “You know, if I had an ex.”

“And if you were of age,” Perfuma comments graciously to which Frosta groans so intensely, it may have shortened her life span.

“It’s not my fault I graduated early! I turn eighteen in three months, god!”

Perfuma giggles and ruffles her precisely laid hair. “You can just call me Perfuma,” she says.

But Catra’s not paying attention to their banter because her mind is still fixated on that incriminating two letter word. “Adora’s _not_ my ex,” she says through clenched teeth.

The two girls turn towards her, frozen — one suspended in mid-laugh and the other scowling and smoothing down her hair. They find common ground in gawking at her.

“Wait, what?” they blurt out in unison.

“Has the pectin seeped to your brain?” And before Perfuma can point out the inaccuracies in her very rhetorical question, Catra repeats, “She is _not_ my _ex._ Who told you that?”

“That’s just what people are saying. I mean, setting someone’s clothes on fire is pretty ‘spurned ex’ behavior, if you ask me,” Frosta says.

“I wasn’t _spurned.”_ Catra punctuates her point by pounding a fist on the table, her skin flushing red. “And for the last time, she is not my ex. Anyone who says otherwise is _lying_ to you. As a matter of fact, don’t even put our names in the same sentence. Got it?” 

“Got it,” her co-workers say still in unison, exchanging a look that’s half-withering, half-amused until Frosta turns back to Catra to haughtily ask, “Then why’d you do it?”

There’s an inner child in Catra that would love to knock over the table and show them how she used to handle things back in the Fright Zone, but opts for her award-winning death stare and says, “Last time I checked, you two were getting paid to train me. Not meddle in my personal business, so can we get back to the matter at hand? The smoothies are melting.” 

She doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for anything, especially not a pair of stuck-up princesses probably only looking to drum up some fresh gossip like it’s oil to fuel their shallow little girls’ nights.

“Of course!” Perfuma says brightly. “Besides, Scorpia told me you’re on the squad now, so we’ll all have plenty of time to get to know each other this year.”

Frosta scrunches her face in confusion “ _You’re_ on the squad?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Catra grumbles. If the ground opened up and swallowed her whole, she wouldn’t exactly complain about it. The last thing she wants to think about is spending the next four years of her life bending over backwards and doing backflips and, worst of all, _smiling like an idiot_ for a bunch of bullheaded neanderthals, much less the big blonde bullhead that seems to have everyone on this campus wrapped around her little finger.

“But you weren’t at tryouts. Or spirit camp.”

“Yeah, well. Your coach and I met through unconventional circumstances.”

“This year is going to be so much better than last year.” Perfuma wraps her arms around her body like she’s trying to keep all of her good energy contained. “I can feel it.”

Frosta puffs out her cheeks. “Well, anything has to be better than last year.”

“What happened last year?” Catra asks, even though she doesn't really care..

“We got...second at Despondos.”

“Oh, right. And the Rebels always come in first.”

“Well, most of the time, yes,” Perfuma explains. “Except in 2014 when Bright Moon came in fifth. But better fifth than second, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Frosta agrees.

Catra‘s lost. What kind of weed are these two smoking if they’d rather place _lower_ in a competition? “I don’t think I understand,” she says slowly.

“Catra…” Perfuma reaches a tan hand out on the table, almost touching Catra’s arm, but not quite, a pained expression pulling on her features in a way she didn’t think Flower Power was even capable of. “It’s _second_ place _.”_

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

Frosta narrows her eyes in suspicion. “You’ve never cheered before, have you?” she interrogates.

“Uh,” Catra sputters, “No, but—”

“Then how did you get on the team?”

“I don’t know, Frostbite. The coach offered me a free college education and I’m not an idiot, so I took it!” Catra hisses defensively.

And if Frosta and Perfuma were drinking something, they certainly would have done a spit take at this point by the way they’re looking at her. “ _Y-you_ got the Moon-Stone Scholarship?” Frosta stammers.

“Oh my gosh...” Perfuma marvels beside her.

Angella made it seem like every cheerleader got a scholarship. Catra doesn’t get what the big deal is — though she has to admit, their awe is feeding her soul and clearing her skin like nothing has before. She could get used to this. “What?” she puts a hand on her chest innocently. “You didn’t?”

“Well, obviously not,” Frosta snarks, and it’s out of envy. She’s jealous. She wants what Catra _has._ “That scholarship only goes out like once every five years, and that’s only for, like, the best of the...” She trails off, probably from witnessing Catra’s face grow insufferable in its smugness. “Anyways _,”_ she clears her throat, schools her face into something closer to her neutral stoic. “Congratulations. Can’t wait to see what you do on the mat.”

“Yeah,” chimes Perfuma. “You must be crazy talented.”

Catra smirks and shrugs, “What can I say?” 

Honestly, what can she say? There’s no logical reason as to why Angella would bestow such a ridiculously competitive scholarship on a girl she doesn't know. A girl who tried to rob her, no less. This can only mean one of two things: either the woman sees something in Catra, something that says _I’m a closeted preppy bimbo, woo_. 

Or she did it out of pity.

If it’s the latter, she’ll gladly start packing her bag tonight.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“So they’re not _gone_ gone?” Adora asks with wide, hopeful eyes, hugging one of the sectional’s throw pillows tightly against her stomach.

The ride back to Bright Moon had been filled with a profound silence up until the point when Glimmer glanced into the backseat, a little worried, and asked where Adora’s shoes were. An innocuous question, really, but it set off a domino effect which ultimately led to Adora having a panic attack on the side of the highway. 

Surprisingly, hearing your friend say through pained gasps, “My foster mother erased an entire person from my memory, and my entire life is a lie,” isn’t that surprising when you’re the daughter of a sorcerer, so after many minutes of slow, deep breaths and every grounding exercise Bow could think of, they got back into the car and detoured to Glimmer’s childhood home in the suburbs. 

Micah shakes his head, holding his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his foot bouncing slightly. “It’s impossible to erase a memory. No amount of sorcery could achieve that. However, they can be severely manipulated and repressed, and that severity depends on their skill level. Think of it like one long hell of a blackout.”

“Then how can I unrepress them?” Adora asks, fidgeting, unable to conceal her own distress.

Micah draws in a sharp breath through his teeth, the way he always does when he’s about to say something unpleasant. “Unfortunately, there’s no exact science to it. Since the use of magic is often frowned upon in society these days, and mind manipulation is _highly_ frowned upon among sorcerers, there hasn’t been much research done on the matter. All reports of reversing it have only been anecdotal.”

“What did they say?”

“Well, there were a few methods that I cannot recommend to you with a good conscience, but as the memories seem to be targeted around an individual, your best chance is proximity. Spend as much time as possible with… What did you say her name was?”

“Catra.”

“Catra… Hm. Name sounds familiar.” He racks his brain for a moment. Eventually the lightbulb goes on and his eyes bulge. “Wait a second. _Catra_? Short hair? Blue and yellow eyes? Of the feline-esque variety?” The trio nods, and despite himself, Micah barely contains a fit of laughter in the web of his palm. “That’s… Wow. That’s somethin’.”

“Dad! Why are you laughing?” Glimmer squeaks.

“Do you know her?” asks Adora.

Micah settles back into seriousness after one last mirthful hum before his eyes darken. “Just tell her that I still want my watch back.”

“That was _her?_ ”

Glimmer’s outburst goes unaddressed as Micah continues on, “So you should spend as much time as you can with _Catra_. In hopes of jogging up some of the memories,” he explains. “It’s important to understand that you can’t force the memories to come back. You have to allow them to rise from the depths of your subconscious. You have to take a relaxed approach.”

“You realize who you’re talking to, right?” Glimmer mutters under her breath. Bow elbows her in the side.

“Have you ever experienced deja vu?” Micah asks.

Adora shrugs, “I mean, sure.” 

“People say that that’s how it feels when they were starting together memories back. Unexpected. Fleeting. Inexplicably familiar. But if you try too hard, try to grab at them too tightly, they could slip away. Like a butterfly. So just pay attention to any strange emotional responses when you’re around her. Keep a journal to log what comes up. It may also help if you meditate,” he offers.

“Aw, man.” Adora slumps down on the sofa.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m just really bad at that.” 

“Meditating?”

“All of it. But especially meditating.”

“I’ve had deja vu before. Does that mean I’ve had my memories erased, too?” Bow whispers — which is only to say he shouts breathily.

“...Really, Bow?” Glimmer whispers back in a similar fashion.

“It’s a legitimate question!” 

The couple hushes once they notice the two pairs of eyes hard staring at them. “Sorry!” they apologize together, still whispering.

“Thanks for the advice, Micah,” says Adora at a normal speaking level.

“Yeah, thanks, Dad,” Glimmer follows suit.

“I wish I could be of more help.” Micah holds out empty palms skyward. “Adora. How do I say this? Just be prepared for the impact that the memories may have on you. Maybe they won’t have that great of an effect, but it’s highly unlikely that someone would go through a procedure as painstaking and dangerous as this if the memories weren’t significant in some way.” 

Micah looks deeply at her, a friendly warning set in his eyes. Adora registers the flutter of unease, but she has a shot at a solution for her problem, and she clings to that bead of hope with everything she has. “Well, that’ll be a problem for future Adora. I hope,” she says as the room falls into a pensive lull, and the silence makes her head swirl. “Well,” Adora slaps her thighs. “We should probably head back to campus if we want to make it in time for dinner.”

Bow and Glimmer murmur in agreement, and they all get on their feet.

“Alright, kids.” Micah holds his arms out to hug all of them. “Bow, good to see you. Glimmer, it’s never too late to move back in.”

Glimmer rolls her eyes. “Ugh, bye, Dad.”

“And Adora. Good luck. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow for class.”

“Yes, sir,” Adora salutes in good spirit. “And thanks again.” _For everything,_ she wants to add _._ Glimmer's parents have helped her in more ways than she can count, in more ways than she wants to.

“Anytime,” Micah nods.

Bow and Glimmer put their shoes on at the door, while Adora tries not to think too hard about her bare sock covered feet. When they all pack into the car, Adora hugs them both from behind. It’s a little awkward to manage, taking the seats and headrests into account, but the sentiment is there. “Thanks, Glim. Thanks, Bow. I couldn’t have gotten through today without you guys.”

“You know we got your back, Adora,” Bow says, patting her arm.

“Yeah!” Glimmer gives her an encouraging smile. “It’s going to be okay, okay? And if it makes you feel better, I’m not above decking old ladies in the face.”

“Babe. Really?”

“Too soon, Glimmer,” Adora says, but the small laugh that forces its way out of her is sanguine and buoyant and feels like a mirage in the desert, like the first stroke of land after being hit by a riptide. It’s a miracle she hasn’t passed out, it feels like she hasn’t breathed in days. Her teeth feel like they might crack from the pressure of clenching down on them so much. 

“Sorry,” Glimmer mumbles. 

“Why don’t we stop and get something to eat?” Bow suggests. 

“Adora, we could split a bottle of wine?” Glimmer strokes her chin. “Yeah, we need a bottle of wine. A bottle of blueberry wine.”

“No way,” is Adora’s firm answer. After what happened with Shadow Weaver, she needs to keep her systems in control and in balance, so alcohol is definitely out of the question until further notice. “Besides, I need to find Catra.”

“What are you going to say to her?” Glimmer asks.

“I don’t know.” Adora doesn’t have a plan, and she hates not having a plan, but then again, no one ever plans for something like this to happen to them. Though she does have an idea. “Actually, can we stop by the hardware store?”

“Uh, sure,” Bow says, “but don’t you want to stop and grab some shoes first?”

Adora looks down at her feet. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


By all accounts, Adora should be starving by now — ravenous, even — her body being fueled only by adrenaline, heightened cortisol and one banana, but the concept of chewing solid food sounds as feasible as tearing through brick with her teeth. 

“Adora, you have to eat something _._ You‘ve barely eaten all day, you’ve used a lot of energy, and between you and me, you’re lookin’ a little pale,” Bow lectures. They’ve been wandering the dining hall for almost twenty minutes, and twenty times has Adora tried to get out of it.

“I’m _going_ to eat. I just need to find Catra first,” Adora disputes, antsy and freshly Birkenstock-clad. “And I’m always pale.”

“Yeah, but this campus is huge, you know. She can be anywhere. It could take _hours_ to—”

“Found her,” Glimmer pipes, not-so-discreetly pointing at the girl at a cafe across the court. 

Her back is turned, but the figure, the form, the hair, is unmistakable. Smoothie Kingdom is always dead on Sunday evenings. So she’s probably working alone.

“I’m gonna go get a smoothie!” Adora doesn’t wait for her friends to answer and heads in that direction with a full-bodied grin on her face, her eyes screaming both thrill and terror. 

She approaches the counter with the caution of a bulldozer. “Hey.” 

The greeting, deceptive in its simplicity, betrays her tumbling heart, betrays the feeling that’s right on the tip of her tongue, an itch in the center of her skull.

Catra’s ears startle at the sound, but she doesn’t turn around. “We’re closed,” she grunts.

“Smoothie Kingdom closes at 7 on Sundays.” 

Catra’s shoulders rise and fall in the heave of a sigh. When she turns to face Adora, avoiding her eyes, she grabs the apple sitting on the cutting board, tosses it back and forth between the palms of her hands. When she speaks, it’s a monotone, “What can I get you then? I hear the Oh, Snapple’s a hit.”

Adora frowns at the sight of the fruit. “Apples give me hives.” Seeing Catra’s cutting smirk, she adds, “But something tells me you already knew that. Can we talk?” 

The slope of Catra’s lips curl down into something less smug and more cold. She rounds out a sharp finger at her. “What else do you call that thing you’re doing with your mouth?” she quips, and it’d be amusing if she didn’t look like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world than here with her.

The corner of Adora’s mouth quirks up in spite of that fact, but the bloom of her smile gets swallowed quickly, gone as soon as it came. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asks softly. 

Expression unreadable, Catra stills, cocks her head and pauses her one-woman game of catch to place — more like _slam —_ the apple on the counter between them. “Tell you what?” 

“You know what.”

“Yeah,” Catra nods, licks her lips wolfishly. “But I’m gonna need you to say it.” 

“I went and saw Shadow Weaver. Like you said. She told me everything.”

They study each other, a minor impasse. And then in a flash, Catra hops over the counter so fast Adora has to take a few steps to avoid getting knocked on her ass.

“So you remember,” says Catra, low and gravelly, advancing on Adora, but Adora doesn’t retreat, so their feet land only inches away from each other. Just as close as they were in the restroom.

“No,” Adora answers, strained, “but there’s a chance I can get them back. I just need your help.”

Catra’s cheek juts out where she jabs her tongue in it. She’s thinking about something. Her glare doesn’t cool at all. “How are so sure you want them back?” she challenges with a sneer, her chin lifted unkindly. “Maybe you should be thanking her.”

Adora hisses like she’s been slapped. Because that’s how it feels. “How can you say that?” she says, quite loud considering they’re very much face to face. “It’s my _life._ They're _my_ memories.”

Shadow Weaver did say that Catra made her miserable, and all Catra has done so far is threaten her and mess with her head. This could all really end with her life ruined, with her future _down the drain_ , but for the first time in Adora’s life, she’s willing to risk being a failure if it means not living out a hand-woven version of her own life, a tactile illusion. 

Catra gives her a glint of a patronizing grin. “Clearly, they didn’t mean that much to you if you were willing to let her give you a magical lobotomy,” she argues with jarring, soulless apathy. “You got yourself into this mess. Get yourself out.”

“Wow, that is _really_ unfair!”

Catra explodes, a nerve hit. “You wanna know what’s not _fair_? You—” She catches herself, balls her hands into fists in front of her chest, and glares at Adora like she shouldn’t have wasted her words on her in the first place. “You don’t get to talk to me about fair.”

“C and A, right?” Adora blurts out like it’s a secret and dire password, and Catra rolls her eyes so hard that for a split second Adora wonders if she’s being possessed. “That’s us, isn’t it? We were—” Adora puts her hands on her shoulders, but Catra instantly stiffens under her fingertips. She reddens and takes her hands away, a little hurt. “What were we?”

Catra crosses her arms petulantly and averts her gaze. “What do you think we were?”

The rebound throws Adora off guard. She hadn’t wanted to give it too much thought, lest she get the wrong idea, come to the wrong conclusion and endure the mortifying ordeal of Catra having to tell her otherwise. “Honestly?” 

“No, lie to me.” 

“I think…” Adora pinches her bottom lip, a mindless musing habit. 

She thinks of the party, and of her hand in hers and vice versa, and the space her chest cleared for her the second they first locked eyes before it all broke into chaos, and the way it split in two when she ran away. She thinks of the tears that weren’t hers and the _poison_ and the _pain she inflicted on her._

Inexplicable familiarity. Strange emotional responses. Warmth and misery combined. 

“I don’t know,” Adora finally answers with a bittersweet crack of a smile. “I just— I think that I miss you. I think I’ve missed you for a long time.”

Adora watches her words hit Catra and roll off of her uselessly like raindrops on glass. She doesn't respond. 

What she does is hop back over the counter and start rummaging for something in one of the bottom cabinets. Adora watches, confused, and dimly realizes that that’s where the staff stores their personal belongings. A moment later, Catra re-emerges and holds out her hand, palm up. 

“Here,” she offers callously. Adora meets her back at the counter to see that what’s being offered to her is her pin.

Adora stares at the piece of metal like it could burn her. This isn't what she wants. “No.” She furls Catra’s hand closed, offering a small smile back. “It actually looks good on you.” 

Scowling, Catra roughly pulls her hand away. _“Stop_ doing that,” she snaps, and this time, Adora doesn’t backtrack or apologize.

“Stop doing what?” she asks, pressing ahead.

Catra looks at her again, and just for a moment, she looks younger and softer and devastatingly sad before a steelier expression takes it place. “If you don’t want anything, then get out of my face. You’re holding up the line.”

Adora cranes around to confirm that there’s indeed nobody behind her, since the population of hungry students are opting for, you know, real food. But she does want _something_. “I’ll have a, uh, Dragon Berry then.”

“Do you have a reusable cup?”

“...What?”

“Do you have... You know what, fuck that, I’m not—”

“Oh. No I—”

“—asking people that. I sound like a jackass,” Catra mutters to herself, turning on her heel to make the smoothie while Adora fishes her student ID from her tote. When she’s done, Catra wordlessly sets the clear plastic cup on the counter and snatches the card when Adora hands it over to swipe. 

After taking a sip, Adora grimaces. “Ugh, this tastes—” _awful_ , but she considers that this is probably Catra’s first day, and she’s still learning. “Different,” she settles on.

“Aw, all sales are final,” Catra coos, and now Adora thinks she made it taste this bad on purpose. $6.50 of her meal plan down the drain. 

She sighs at the loss and anxiously pumps the straw up and down in the cup. “So you don’t like me, do you?” she says. 

Catra scoffs and drags her nails down the surface of the countertop, not enough to mar, only for the grating sound. “Now whatever gave you that idea?”

“If you don’t like me, then help me. If you want to make my life miserable, then shouldn’t I know why? Wouldn’t that be more satisfying?”

“I never said I wanted to make your life miserable, Adora. I said I was going to ruin you. There’s a difference.”

A chill runs down Adora's spine, but she doesn’t move.

Catra continues on to ask. “But what exactly does this help entail?”

She reaches into her back pocket and sets a key down on the counter.

“What’s that?”

“A key to Mara’s cottage.”

Her brows knit together, and then finally Adora’s proposition clicks and she reels back. “Have you lost your mind?!”

“Uh, well, yeah. I have, and I want it back, so…” Adora pushes the key further towards her with determined force. “What’s important is that we spend time with each other. You know, bond."

"Bond," Catra echos.

“I have a guest room. The cottage is way too big for one person, and we’re both clearly busy, so it’s not like we’ll be breathing down each other’s necks. We’ll barely see each other. And if we lived together before, then...”

“That house is, like, five miles out. I’m not walking that every day just you can— _no._ ”

“It’s, like, two, and you can take my bike!”

Catra snorts, “You still have that lame bike?”

The recognition feels like another slap to the face. A slap in the chest. There’s a unique barrier between them, a one-sided mirror where Catra can clearly see Adora in her fullness with clear vision, and all Adora can do is see her own reflection through Catra’s eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Wow. You haven’t changed at all. Same bike. Same hair. Same self-absorbed Adora expecting people to upend their entire life just because _you_ say so. Well, I’m not doing it. Besides, I wouldn’t trust me in your house if I were you.”

“Good thing you’re not then,” Adora snaps, Catra’s words rippling through her like a shot in the dark, like words not meant for her because she was simply caught in the crossfire. It hurts just the same. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “I wouldn’t wish something like this on anybody else. Not even on my worst enemy.”

“Would you have even believed me if I did?” The question comes spewing out like she’d been trying to cram it down the back of her throat this whole time. 

“If you what?”

“If I told you what she did, would you have believed me?”

“Yeah, I think I might have.” Adora wishes she could get closer and speak without words like Bow and Glimmer do. She wants to know— _remember_ Catra down the ridges of her knuckles. She wants to know the rivers that flow inside her, where they’re headed, where they came from. She wants to know even if it means drowning in them. 

But that’s not what Catra wants. “I need to start closing up,” she mumbles and picks up the apple on the counter, turning her back to Adora to resume the chopping she was busy with before.

“So is that a yes?” Adora asks, forlorn.

“No,” Catra says, not turning around. “But I’ll see you around. They’ll come back.”  
  


  
  
  
  
  


Adora leaves the lamp on when she falls asleep.

Just for the night. She’s not afraid of the dark. Just sometimes it helps to see, to survey, to watch that which watches her. Her body feels like lead, but her mind feels like prey; therefore, it feels like a betrayal when sleep starts to take her over. 

It could be hours, or seconds later when she’s jolted out of her fragile slumber by the _pound, pound, pounding_ on her front door.

For a second she fears there’s a mob of intoxicated jocks and frat boys (and Sea Hawk) hoisting kegs and demanding an impromptu rager — you know, like in the movies, but when she feels her way downstairs, eyes blurry and drooping, and whisks the door open, she barely makes out the petite body that moves past her in a blur, storming in like she owns the place. 

“Catra...?”

“Where’s the room?” Catra demands impatiently, standing arms crossed in the middle of the living room. 

Adora sputters and slurs drowsily, “Uh, up the stairs, door on the left. Are you—”

Without a word, Catra briskly heads in that direction. Adora marches on heel.

“Is everything alright?” she asks.

Catra doesn’t answer. She doesn’t say another word until she reaches the room in question. “You said I could sleep here, right?” she tosses over her shoulder with her brows furrowed and her hand already gripping the doorknob.

“Yeah! Yeah, of course.” Adora’s hand reaches out.

“Okay,” she rasps. “So let me.” And before Adora can get another word in, she slinks into the room, kicking the door shut behind her. 

“Okay,” is Adora’s delayed response from her side of the wall, her hand still suspended in the air, unsure of where to land, unsure of where it was headed. “Goodnight.” 

She lingers there for a few more minutes. Perhaps more than a few, but only until it’s clear that Catra isn’t coming out again. With reluctant steps, she returns to her room across the hall and sits curled against the pillows of her headboard, a cacophony of questions swirling around her head, all centered around a constant, steady note of...

Adora leaves the door open when she falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #shadowweaverisoverparty
> 
> thank you for reading and for the kudos! comments are always super appreciated!


	5. the heart of a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i really prefer my chapters to be longer, esp. when it's been a while (sorry!), but it's been a hell of day and i am but a husk of a woman at this point. all i have to offer is a brief escape.
> 
> stay safe!

Catra stands in front of the door in the guest room, waiting. She knows Adora is still on the other side of it. She’s got ears. Good ones, at that. She doesn’t have to strain at all to hear her heavy breaths, her shuffling back and forth, the scrapes of her fingernails flicking against each other.

Bathed in the spotlight of the moon and suspended in a moment of _stay_ before the inevitable _leave_ , Catra is thrown back to their last night together.

  
  
  
  
  


_“So...looks like prom is a no-go,” Catra jokes in an almost-whisper, lightly punching Adora’s arm and pouting her lips in fake (almost fake) disappointment._

_Adora makes a hurt face and rubs her arm. She looks so stupid when she does that, and it’s not making this any easier. “Guess so,” Adora says, the corners of her lips pulling back into a tight smile. “You would have hated it, anyway.”_

_“Psh, oh, totally. But I would have loved to see their faces when we pulled up in tee-shirts and sweats and still looked hotter than all of them combined,” Catra whines, dropping her head on Adora’s shoulder._

_“I thought we’d go in tiger costumes.”_

_“No, that was your weird idea.” Catra rolls her eyes. “We were going for too cool to care, remember? Not, like, tryhard and contrarian. ‘Sides, where were we gonna get tiger costumes?”_

_Adora’s smile relaxes, one side of her mouth rising higher than the other in a way that shouldn’t be so magnetic, but is. And then she laughs. A quiet laugh since it’s way past lights out and neither of them should still be up, much less up and huddled together on the cold roof, swaddled in Adora’s jacket. It’s not big enough to cover the both of them, but as long as they both hold on to one side, they can pretend. “You could’ve worn my pin as a corsage.” she says._

_“You_ would _make me wear your pin as a corsage!” Catra wheezes with laughter without a care. It_ is _her last night, after all. She’s got nothing to lose._

_With a close-mouthed chuckle, she pulls the jacket off of their shoulders, exposing their backs to the late autumn chill. Adora shivers against her side, so once Catra has unclamped the pin in question, she throws the jacket back around her friend’s broader shoulders. She’s not_ that _cold, anyway._

_She clasps the pin onto the wrist of her own hoodie and holds it out between them. “How does it look on me?” she asks with a teasing smirk, waiting for Adora to laugh again and make fun of how ridiculous she’s being._

_But Adora just stares at her with...with_ that _look. The one she‘s starting to hate. The one that makes her heart do a double take. The one that gives her a sliver of hope that she might..._

_Nope. Don’t even go there._

_She has to suppress a shiver when Adora starts toying with the piece of metal hanging on the edge of her sleeve, but it’s a Herculean effort when Adora is brushing her wrists through the thick fabric and using her other hand to graze along her knuckles, her thumb drawing circles in her palm._

_“You should keep it. It looks good on you,” Adora says, her eyes burning blue and warm, and the chill running down Catra’s spine swiftly turns to heat._

_She refuses to look down at their intertwined hands because then she’ll have to see how strong and perfect Adora’s hands are against hers; she can’t look in her eyes without seeing how stunning and silver they glow in the moonlight; and then her smile, lazy and dreamy and dangling there on her lips like ripe fruit, mere inches away from her own._

_“Everything looks good on you,” Adora whispers, and...shit._

_Catra can’t do this._

_With her heart racing and with nowhere else to look, she averts her gaze to the moon, taking up too much space in the sky like always. It helps._

_Touch is nothing new between them, but Adora shouldn’t be touching her like this. Looking at her like this. Talking to her like this. Not anymore. Adora_ knows _this._

_“Sorry,” Adora apologizes quietly, her jaw clenched tight, but she doesn’t move her hand. “I shouldn’t have said that.”_

_Catra forces a laugh to lighten the mood, but it feels strained and robotic. “Don’t apologize, loser. You know my ego can always use a good—“ Adora brushes a lock of hair out of her face. “...stroking.”_

_“Catra, I have to tell you something.”_

  
  
  
  
  


Catra wills the memory away. 

_Fuck_. She shouldn’t have come here. It’s just— 

Those fucking _fire alarms._

They started blaring just after midnight _._ Ear-splitting and piercing and endless. It nearly knocked the air out of her, and most certainly sent her knocking on Scorpia’s door, who’s apparently more than used to this.

_“Eh, yeah, this happens like once a week. I don’t know why. That’s why I’ve got these headphones!” Scorpia shouts over the sirens, pointing to the black industrial sized headphones hanging around her neck. “They’re pricey, but they take noise cancellation to a whole new level!”_

Well, she doesn’t have headphones or the money to get them, and Catra and unexpected loud noises do not go together. 

She couldn’t stay in Elberon while that was going on, and unfortunately, hiking it _here_ was her only option. 

She catches the soft patter of feet retreating and the puny squeak of a bed, and only then does she back away from the door. She waits for a _click_ that never comes.

Interesting.

Catra takes a look around. The room seems deceptively untouched, like a hotel. The bed is thick, big enough to spread out and sink into, and coated in ivory bedding. Plush carpeting pillows her bare feet, a relief from the wet grass and gravel she endured on the way here, but the pale pink walls are gross and— is that a chandelier? In a guest room? Really, Adora?

She sits on the bed and cradles her face in her hand. Her head feels like someone rammed a pole through it and her skull is ready to crumble in on itself. It’s an ache that pushes on the backs of her eyes. It might pass with some rest, but it might keep her up all night.

There’s a teeny part of her, a perennial echo of her younger self, that wishes it was four years ago, because if it was four years ago, she’d go crawling into Adora’s room right now, sure to turn the knob before the door hits the frame so no one will hear it shut. She’d press up against Adora’s front and mumble about never getting to be the big spoon, even though she likes being the little spoon. She’d complain about her headache and Adora would make her turn around and—

_No. We’re not doing this._

She doesn’t need to think about the past. She doesn’t need to think about Adora sleeping in the next room. She needs to think about managing some sleep before her first day of classes, especially if she has to get up early enough to get the hell out of here before Adora wakes.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Except apparently, New Adora doesn’t sleep. 

That’s what Catra has decided to call her. New Adora. It helps to separate this oblivious cottagecore version of Adora from the Adora she used to walk to school with and wrestle with and play pranks on Kyle with and sit by the lake with and sneak into movies with and hum to sleep and dream of a future with and—

It’ll be better for the both of them this way. She will deal with New Adora until it’s time to hash it out with the real Adora.

And at the moment, New Adora is sitting in her kitchen with the lights on at nearly five in the morning, cup of coffee in hand and ruining Catra’s getaway in the process.

“Oh, hey! You’re up early,” she greets from her oh, so quaint little window nook, like she’s not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before moonrise. Already she’s advancing on Catra, clutching a mug that says “I eat guys like you for breakfast!” It looks like something she would have picked up for Adora when they were living together. Only Adora used to not like the taste of coffee. _New_ Adora drinks coffee. “How’d you sleep?” she asks, flurried.

“Fine,” Catra grumbles under her breath, leaving out the fact that the bed was the most sinfully comfortable thing she’s ever laid in.

“Good! Need any extra blankets or pillows or anything?“ Adora sets her mug on the table and goes around it to move in closer. Catra takes a step back.

“I said it was fine, and I was just leaving, so—”

“Oh, okay! Going to campus? I’ll take you. I usually go on jogs around this time so we can kill two birds with one stone. Stay right there! Just let me grab my running shoes,” New Adora jerks a thumb over her shoulder before rounding the corner to run up the stairs.

It seems New Adora doesn’t yet know how bad she is at following directions, and as soon as she’s out of sight, Catra’s out the door. She disregards the curvature of the stone path in the front lawn to beeline straight for the road. The pads of her feet sop up cool dew from the grass before meeting rugged pavement. 

The predawn sky bleeds stripes of orange and violet. Jacaranda trees line either side of the road in perfect color coordination. Catra has a theory that every aspect of Bright Moon’s landscape was meticulously pre-planned to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible. 

It’s a matter of minutes before she’s trailed by the low clicking of a bike and the skid of its wheels as it comes to an abrupt stop beside her.

“It’s kind of rude to leave without saying goodbye, you know.” Her voice still kind of shrills when she’s annoyed. 

When Catra doesn’t answer, Adora— New Adora huffs and dismounts and walks alongside her, dragging the bike along by the handlebars. “Wanna catch a ride on my lame bike? I’ve got a rear rack.” Playfully suggestive, she runs her hand over the aluminum contraption. 

“No. Thanks.” Catra pulls the hood of her hoodie up. Hitching rides on that dumb bike was an Old Adora and Catra thing. It wouldn’t be wise to cross-contaminate.

“Do you know its name?” New Adora asks tentatively, and of course, Catra knows its fucking name. It’s only the most embarrassing, disgraceful name one could bestow upon a vehicle, and she refuses to stoop to the level of saying it out loud.

“Guess not,” New Adora supposes, and it makes something prideful in Catra swell up and taunt her. Fine. She’ll bite. 

“Only you could call a bike Swift Wind and still be able to live with yourself.” She sneaks a glance over and finds blue eyes surveying her intently.

“Yeah...,” she says. “But look at it! It pretty much names itself.”

“Are you just going to follow me until I get there?”

New Adora hums in consideration. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but that sounds like a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion.” She grins cheekily. “Unless you’re planning on running away again?”

“I don’t know, are you planning on tackling me again?” Catra glares and gets an apologetic smile in return.

“So what made you change your mind?” New Adora asks with a small, contented smile after a prolonged beat of silence. 

“Huh?”

“About moving in.”

Catra stutters in her steps. So that’s why she was playing housekeeper before. “Nothing. I didn’t change my mind. I just needed somewhere to crash while those stupid fire alarms were going off.” Now it’s Catra’s turn to study Adora. 

“Oh, yeah. Don’t miss that at all.” She nods understandingly, but not with the particular brand of understanding Catra wants. “Well, the offer still stands. The more time we spend together, the faster I can—“

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Catra waves her hand. “Look, we can,” she gestures between them, “coexist, okay? Until you remember. But I need my own space.”

“Right. Because you don’t like me,” New Adora says firmly like it’s the correct answer on an exam.

Catra taps a finger against her temple. “Now, you’re getting it."

“Why don’t you?” she asks, smoothing her hand over her ponytail. Her eyes flitter up and down from Catra, to the ground, then back up at her again.

Catra doesn’t answer right away, unsure how to answer in the least pathetic way possible. Unsure if she wants to answer at all. “We were best friends. We were…” She trails off, runs a hand down her face. “ _You_ shut _me_ out of your life. I don’t know why. And as the universe would have it, you don’t either!” She kicks a rock and watches it fly. 

  
  
  
  
  


_Catra fixes her eyes on a passing oil refinery from the backseat of Octavia’s car, looking without seeing. She focuses on keeping her breathing even because there’s pressure building behind her eyes, and she can’t give Octavia the satisfaction of seeing her cry. After all, she could be the reason why she’s being forced away from the only person in the world who has ever mattered to her, and she’s always seemed to get a kick out of Catra’s misfortunes._

_It’s been almost ten years, and she hasn’t gotten over the corneal abrasion Catra gave her when she was still small, skittish and terrified of the world. Sometimes, she still dons the eyepatch as a reminder, though she’s long healed from it._

_That’s precisely why Catra assumes she’s fucking with her head when she peers at her through the rear view with a wicked smirk on her face and says, “So what’d you do to Adora to make her want you out so bad?”_

_It takes a second for Catra to understand because, frankly, the sentence doesn’t make any kind of logical sense. But when the slots click into place, a wave of ice washes over her. A film of moisture forms in her eyes and calcifies. Her muscles turn to stone. In the corner of her mind is a voice that cries, ‘What the hell are you talking about, cyclops? On no version of Etheria would Adora ever make me leave her.’ Especially not after last night._

_What comes out instead is a small, warbling mewl._

_“Now, you know the innocent act doesn’t work on me,” Octavia says snidely, as if she’s gabbing gossip. “Poor girl cornered me after my last visit. Terrified. You should’ve seen her face. She was begging me to get you out.”_

_Catra blinks hard once, then again, and again. “Th-that wasn’t Adora,” she stammers, but she means it with immutable certainty. That couldn’t have been Adora. That doesn’t even_ sound _like Adora._

_Octavia sucks her teeth and shakes her head. “I have eyes, Catra. No thanks to you.”_

_She’d roll her own eyes if she wasn’t crumbling. “Did she say why?” Her voice reaches a high-pitched croak. It feels like there’s a brick lodged in her throat._

_“Confidential,” she answers with way too much pleasure, and Catra knows by now she only cries non-disclosure to get under her skin. “But don’t worry. Your next home will get you all straightened out.”_

_This knocks the wind out of Catra. “Turn around.”_

_Octavia keeps driving._

_“I’m serious!" She kicks the back of Octavia's seat, making her swerve in the process. "Let me out! You didn’t hear her right. It’s those stupid fin ears.” Fuck it. Catra tries the handle. She can learn to tuck and roll today._

_“Child lock, sweetie.”_

_Catra gets out of her seat, gets in Octavia’s face, and puts on the most menacing voice she can muster. “You better turn this car around or I go for the other eye this time.”_

_Raising a paper thin eyebrow, Octavia’s lips spread into a heartless grin. “That a threat? I'll be sure to put that on record.” She presses down on her gas. Catra thinks she might throw up._

_Unshed tears start tumbling down her face, the dam broken, her reserve of stamina and pride run dry. “Please,” she begs shamelessly. “Just please let me talk to her. You don’t understand. Octavia…” She climbs into the passenger. “Let's talk. Woman to...whatever you are. Octavia. Have you ever been in love?”_

  
  
  
  
  


She’s had a long time to reflect on everything she did wrong. And in hindsight, there were so many things it could’ve been. Adora had said last night that she _missed_ her. Obviously can’t be true. Any moment now, she could remember that she doesn’t want anything to do with her.

They walk in more silence again, only the soft, steady _tick, tick, tick_ of the bike to disrupt it, before she opens her mouth again, barely a whisper, “Do you hate me?” 

The question makes Catra stop in her tracks, makes the inside of her chest prickle. She can feel her eyes boring into her. The answer she should give is a hard and plain _yes,_ but no matter how she forms it, it doesn’t sit right on her lips yet. Too crude for her crude tongue. 

“Stop asking me questions at the ass crack of dawn.” Avoiding her eyes, Catra plops her ass down on the rear rack in an effort to cut the conversation. “Drop me off at the gate.” 

New Adora _um_ and _uhs_ for a bit and then swings her leg over the saddle. “Okay, just—“ Catra rounds her arm securely around her waist, like she used to. “—uh, yeah, just do that.”

The lavender trees whizz by in a blur as they ride. The _woosh_ of air hitting them and the soft vibration the ride offers lulls Catra enough for her eyes to slide closed for a minute, and if she emits a low purr, no one needs to know about it. It’s just the sleep getting to her. 

It’s a short respite. Her moment of peace ends once they reach the hill, and Catra has to grip onto her waist tighter to keep from flying off the back of it. She looks over, and all she can see are muscular thighs pumping and flexing against the pull of gravity. 

By the time she breaks away to look back straight ahead of her, they’re well into campus. She hadn’t noticed when the terrain evened out. “Hey!” she cries out. “I said the _gate!”_

“Why, when I can just as easily drop you off at Elberon?” New Adora throws over her shoulder. 

Catra all but shrieks, “How do you know where I live?”

“You’re Scorpia’s roommate. I know where Scorpia lives. Therefore, I know where you live,” she doggedly explains.

“Great,” Catra groans. “Now everyone can see me being carted around like a basket of fruit.” 

“No one can see you,” she assures. “It’s the ass crack of dawn, y’know.”

“Ugh.” 

Catra doesn’t say anything more, not even once they’re stopped in front of the domed building. She doesn’t give thanks. This “favor” used to be an everyday routine. She hops off to head inside but is stopped when purposeful fingers hook the inside of her elbow.

“Wait.” 

Catra turns to her. A couple of seconds pass where she doesn’t say anything, just gives Catra this deer in the headlights look. “What?” she asks, raising her brows impatiently.

“Will you eat lunch with us? Me and my friends, I mean. You don’t have to engage, if you don’t want to. Just, uh, coexist with us.” Her hand slides down, grazing Catra’s wrist in its path. “Please?”

Catra’s brain is still foggy. Her throat hoarse with sleep. She turns her eyes skyward then back down to those same needy eyes her former friend keeps throwing at her, like she’s waiting for Catra to hang the stars back up in the sky for her.

And at one point, she would have. She would’ve done anything, _anything_ for her. It was like Catra was the moon, and Adora was the sun, bright and all-consuming, and with her out of her life, it all got painted black. She won’t have Adora coming in, blinding her again. 

But here she is, trying to come up over the horizon, and Catra has to look away. 

She shakes her head no, but a small, “Fine,” slips out of her mouth. She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. “But you’re paying, princess.” Her meal plan only goes so far, after all. 

Adora’s face melts into a small, dimpled grin. “Meet me in Thaymor. They have the best options.” She pushes her heel into the kickstand to leave, but then she freezes and locks eyes with Catra, eyebrows pinched together. “Princess…?”

Right. This is New Adora she’s talking to. She must have forgotten for a second there.

Catra hits her a wink and backs away. “See you around.” 

“Wait.”

Face set in concentration, Adora stares at a point on the ground, her lips pursed, her knuckles white from gripping the handlebars for dear life. 

A flutter of something invades Catra’s rib cage. Something like hope. Something like fear. “May I help you?” she deadpans with fine-tuned skill after an uncomfortable amount of time passes.

Every clenched muscle in Adora’s body slackens, and she pushes out a slow, heavy exhale and licks her lips. Her eyebrows stay knotted. Catra can tell she’s angry with herself. 

Well, she should be. 

“Nothing,” Adora finally answers without looking up. “It’s...nothing. I’ll see you at lunch, yeah?” she asks, the need for confirmation feels more urgent than the initial ask. Catra nods, and Adora mirrors her, nodding fervently in return. “Good.” She puts on that smile, the _I’m really trying to keep it together_ smile that always ends up being part grin, part grimace. “I’ll wait for you to make it inside.” 

“Don’t you have a jog to get to?”

“Track’s not going anywhere.” She gives her a sort of pleading look that Catra doesn’t want to read into. 

Taking swaggering backwards steps, Catra rolls her eyes, “Don’t go breaking routine over little ol’ me.” 

“Did you cut your hair?”

Catra halts, one foot hovering slightly off the ground. Her heart stops. Self-conscious, she cards a hand through her short locks, shunting off her hood in the process. Double Trouble cut it for her in a fit of ennui one night months ago, and Catra welcomed the change at the time. It’s grown in some. The back of it now skins the nape of her neck. The front pieces, once scattered across her forehead, now graze the sharp point of her cheekbone. 

The real question is how New Adora _knows_. Catra wants to push up against it. 

She saunters back over, gets close enough for their knees to almost touch. From this angle, Adora has to look up at her from her seat. “Yeah. Wanna feel?”

And then Adora _does._ But there’s a new quality to the touch. She doesn’t dig her hands in and muss it to irritate her. She doesn’t twirl it around her fingers. She doesn’t gently brush it out of her face. She merely pinches a sliver of her ends between her thumb and forefinger, more cautious and hesitant than they ever were.

“I- I just had a feeling,” Adora explains herself, pulling her hand away to place it carefully on top of her thigh.

Catra doesn’t know what to think about this. She doesn’t get exactly how this memory thing works. What Adora does or doesn’t see in her. 

“Noted,” she responds. She points a finger at Adora’s forehead, between her eyes, then pokes it. An old gesture. One that makes her feel twelve again. “Don’t go hiding any secrets. If you remember something, you better tell me,” she warns, lowering her voice to make herself sound as intimidating as possible. 

The old Adora never found her intimidating. In fact, were she here, she’d laugh, capture Catra’s hand in hers, and challenge her with an _“Oh yeah? Or you’ll what?”_ Or an _“Aw, sorry! You’ve got to be_ this _tall to try and threaten me.”_

But New Adora swallows, uncrosses her eyes, and nods once, firm and resolute. “Noted.”

“Good,” Catra says, moving to finally, _finally_ leave. 

Adora doesn’t stop her this time.

To Catra's annoyance, she still waits for her to make it inside. 


End file.
